Part 3 (1/2)

8. (_b_) SUBJECTIVE ”POTENTIA,” ACTIVE AND Pa.s.sIVE.-Furthermore, we conceive the Infinite Being, Almighty G.o.d, as capable of _creating_, or producing actual being _from nothingness_, _i.e._ without any actually pre-existing material out of whose pa.s.sive potentiality the actual being would be developed. Creative power or activity does not need any pre-existing subject on which to exercise its influence, any subject in whose _pa.s.sive potentiality_ the thing to be created is antecedently implicit.

But all other power, all activity of created causes, does require some such actually existing subject. If we examine the activities of the agencies that fall within our direct experience, whether in external nature or in our own selves, we shall find that in no case does their operative influence or causality extend beyond the production of changes in existing being, or attain to the production of new actual being out of nothingness. The forces of nature cannot produce an oak without an acorn, or an iceberg without water; nor can the sculptor produce a statue except from some pre-existing material.

The _natural_ pa.s.sive potentiality of things is, moreover, limited in reference to the active powers of the created universe. These, for example, can educe life from the pa.s.sive potentiality of inorganic matter, but only by a.s.similating this matter into a living organism: they cannot restore life to a human corpse; yet the latter has in it the capacity to be restored to life by the direct influence of the Author of Nature. This special and supernatural potentiality in created things, under the influence of Omnipotence, is known as _potentia obedientalis_.(72)

This consideration will help us to realize that all reality which is produced by change, and subject to change, is essentially a mixture of _becoming_ and _being_, of _potential_ and _actual_. The reality of such being is not _tota simul_. Only immutable being, whose duration is _eternal_, has its reality _tota simul_: it alone is _purely actual_, the ”_Actus Purus_”; and its duration is one eternal ”_now_,” without beginning, end, or succession. But mutable being, whose duration in actual existence is measured by _time_, is actualized only successively: its actuality at any particular instant does not embody the whole of its reality: this latter includes also a ”_was_” and ”_will be_”; the thing was _potentially_ what it now is _actually_, and it will become actually something which it now is only potentially; nor shall we have understood even moderately the nature or essence of any mutable being-an oak-tree, for example-until we have grasped the fact that the whole reality of its nature embraces more than what we find of it actually existing at any given instant of its existence. In other words, we have to bear in mind that the reality of such a being is not pure actuality but a mixture of potential and actual: that it is an _actus non-purus_, or an _actus mixtus_.

We have to note well that the _potential being_ of a thing is something _real_-that it is not merely a _modus loquendi_, or a _modus intelligendi_. The oak is in the acorn in some true and real sense: the potentiality of the oak is something real in the acorn: if it were not so, if it were nothing real in the acorn, we could say with equal truth that a man or a horse or a house is potentially in the acorn; or, again with equal truth, that the oak is potentially in a mustard-seed, or a grain of corn, or a pebble, or a drop of water. Therefore the oak is _really_ in the acorn-not actually but potentially, _potentia pa.s.siva_.

The oak-tree is also really in those _active_ forces of nature whose influence on the acorn develop the latter into an actual oak-tree: it is in those causes not actually, of course, but _virtually_, for they possess in themselves the _operative power_-_potentia activa sive operativa_-to educe the oak-tree out of the acorn. These two potential conditions of a being-in the active causes which produce it, and in the pre-existing actual thing or things from which it is produced-are called each a real or subjective potency, _potentia realis_, or _potentia subjectiva_, in distinction from the mere logical or objective possibility of such a being.

And just as the pa.s.sive potentiality of the statue is something real in the block of marble, though distinct from the actuality of the statue and from the process by which this is actualized, so is the active power of making the statue something real in the sculptor, though distinct from the operation by which he makes the statue. If an agent's _power_ to act, to produce change, were not a reality in the agent, a reality distinct from the _action_ of the latter; or if a being's capacity to undergo change, and thereby to become something other, were not a reality distinct from the process of change, and from the actual result of this process-it would follow not only that the actual alone is real, and the merely possible or potential unreal, but also that no change can be real, that nothing can really become, and nothing really disappear.(73)

9. (_c_) ACTUALITY: ITS RELATION TO POTENTIALITY.-It is from our experience of change in the world that we derive our notions of the potential and the actual, of active power and pa.s.sive potentiality. The term ”act” has primarily the same meaning as ”action,” ”operation,” that process by which a change is wrought. But the Latin word _actus_ (Gr.

?????e?a, ??te???e?a) means rather that which is achieved by the _actio_, that which is the correlative and complement of the pa.s.sive potentiality, the actuality of this latter: that by which potential being is rendered formally actual, and, by way of consequence, this actual being itself.

”_Potentia activa_” and its correlative ”_actus_” might, perhaps, be appropriately rendered by ”_power_” (_potestas agendi_) and ”_action_” or ”_operation_”; ”_potentia pa.s.siva_” and its correlative ”_actus_,” by ”_potentiality_” and ”_actuality_” respectively.

In these correlatives, the notion underlying the term ”actual” is manifestly the notion of something completed, achieved, perfected-as compared with that of something incomplete, imperfect, determinable, which is the notion of the potential. Hence the notions of _potentia_ and _actus_ have been extended widely beyond their primary signification of power to act and the exercise of this power. Such pairs of correlatives as the determinable and the determined, the perfectible and the perfected, the undeveloped or less developed and the more developed, the generic and the specific, are all conceived under the aspect of this widest relation of the potential to the actual. And since we can distinguish successive stages in any process of development, or an order of logical sequence among the contents of our concept of any concrete reality, it follows that what will be conceived as an _actus_ in one relation will be conceived as a _potentia_ in another. Thus, the disposition of any faculty-as, for example, the scientific habit in the intellect-is an _actus_ or perfection of the faculty regarded as a _potentia_; but it is itself a _potentia_ which is actualized in the _operation_ of actually studying. This ill.u.s.trates the distinction commonly drawn between an ”_actus primus_” and an ”_actus secundus_” in any particular order or line of reality: the _actus primus_ is that which presupposes no prior actuality in the same order; the _actus secundus_ is that which does presuppose another. The act of knowing is an _actus secundus_ which presupposes the cognitive faculty as an _actus primus_: the faculty being the _first_ or fundamental equipment of the soul in relation to knowledge. Hence the child is said to have knowledge ”_in actu primo_” as having the faculty of reason; and the student to have knowledge ”_in actu secundo_” as exercising this faculty.

The _actus_ or perfecting principles of which we have spoken so far are all conceived as presupposing an existing subject on which they supervene.

They are therefore _accidents_ as distinct from _substantial const.i.tutive_ principles of this subject; and they are therefore called _accidental_ actualities, _actus_ ”_accidentales_”. But the actual existence of a being is also conceived as the complement and correlative of its essence: as that which makes the latter actual, thus transferring it from the state of mere possibility. Hence existence also is called an _actus_ or actuality: the _actus_ ”_existentialis_,” to distinguish it from the existing thing's activities and other subsequently acquired characters. In reference to these existence is a ”first actuality”-”_Esse est actus primus_”; ”_Prius est esse quam agere_”: ”Existence is the first actuality”; ”Action presupposes existence”-while each of these in reference to existence, is a ”second actuality,” an _actus secundus_.

When, furthermore, we proceed to examine the const.i.tutive principles essential to any being in the concrete, we may be able to distinguish between principles which are determinable, pa.s.sive and persistent throughout all essential change of that being, and others which are determining, specifying, differentiating principles. In water, for example, we may distinguish the pa.s.sive underlying principle which persists throughout the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen, from the active specifying principle which gives that substratum its specific nature as water. The former or material principle (???, _materia_) is _potential_, compared with the latter or formal principle (??f?, e?d??, ??te???e?a, _forma_, _species_, _actus_) as _actual_. The concept of _actus_ is thus applied to the essence itself: the _actus_ ”_essentialis_” or ”_formalis_” of a thing is that which we conceive to be the ultimate, completing and determining principle of the essence or nature of that thing. In reference to this as well as the other const.i.tutive principles of the thing, the actual existence of the thing is a ”second actuality,” an _actus secundus_.

In fact all the const.i.tutive principles of the essence of any existing thing, and all the properties and attributes involved in the essence or necessarily connected with the essence, must all alike be conceived as logically antecedent to the existential _actus_ whereby they are const.i.tuted something in the actual order, and not mere possible objects of our thought. And from this point of view the existence of a thing is called the ultimate actualization of its essence. Hence the scholastic aphorism: ”_Esse est ultimus actus rei_”.

The term _actus_ may designate that complement of reality by which potential being is made actual (_actus_ ”_actuans_”), or this actual being itself (_actus_ ”_simpliciter dictus_”). In the latter sense we have already distinguished the Being that is immutable, the Being of G.o.d, as the _Actus Purus_, from the being of all mutable things, which latter being is necessarily a mixture of potential and actual, an _actus mixtus_.

Now if the essences of corporeal things are composite, if they are const.i.tuted by the union of some determining, formative principle with a determinable, pa.s.sive principle-of ”form” with ”matter,” in scholastic terminology-we may call these formative principles _actus_ ”_informantes_”; and if these cannot actually exist except in union with a material principle they may be called actus ”_non-subsistentes_”: _e.g._, the formative principle or ”_forma substantialis_” of water, or the vital principle of a plant. If, on the other hand, there exist essences which, being simple, do not actualize any material, determinable principle, but subsist independently of any such, they are called _actus_ ”_non-informantes_,” or _actus_ ”_subsistentes_”. Such, for example, are G.o.d, and pure spirits whose existence is known from revelation. Finally, there may be a kind of actual essence which, though it naturally actualizes a material principle _de facto_, can nevertheless continue to subsist without this latter: such an actual being would be at once an _actus informans_ and an _actus subsistens_; and such, in fact, is the human soul.

Throughout all distinctions between the potential and the actual there runs the conception of _the actual as something more perfect than the potential_. There is in the actual something positive and real over and above what is in the potential. This is an ultimate fact in our a.n.a.lysis; and its importance will be realized when we come to apply the notions we have been explaining to the study of change.

The notion of grades of perfection in things is one with which everyone is familiar. We naturally conceive some beings as higher upon the scale of reality than others; as having ”more” reality, so to speak-not necessarily, of course, in the literal sense of size or quant.i.ty-than others; as being more perfect, n.o.bler, of greater worth, value, dignity, excellence, than others. Thus we regard the infinite as more perfect than the finite, spiritual beings as n.o.bler than material beings, man as a higher order of being than the brute beast, this again as surpa.s.sing the whole vegetable kingdom, the lowest form of life as higher on the scale of being than inorganic matter, the substance-mode of being as superior to all accident-modes, the actualized state of a being as more perfect than its potential state, _i.e._ as existing in its material, efficient and ideal or exemplar causes. The grounds and significance of this mental appreciation of relative values in things must be discussed elsewhere. We refer to it here in order to point out another scholastic aphorism, according to which the higher a thing is in the scale of actual being, and the more perfect it is accordingly, the more efficient it will also be as a principle of action, the more powerful as a cause in the production of changes in other things, the more operative in actualizing their pa.s.sive potentialities; and conversely, the less actual a thing is, and therefore the more imperfect, the greater its pa.s.sive capacity will be to undergo the influence of agencies that are actual and operative around it. ”As pa.s.sive potentiality,” says St. Thomas,(74) ”is the mark of potential being, so active power is the mark of actual being. For a thing acts, in so far as it is actual; but is acted on, so far as it is potential.” Our knowledge of the nature of things is in fact exclusively based on our knowledge of their activities: we have no other key to the knowledge of what a thing is than our knowledge of what it does: ”_Operari sequitur esse_”: ”_Qualis est operatio talis est natura_”-”Acting follows being”: ”Conduct is the key to nature”.

A being that is active or operative in the production of a change is said to be the efficient cause of the change, the latter being termed the effect. Now the greater the change, _i.e._ the higher and more perfect be the grade of reality that is actualized in the change, the higher too in the scale of being must be the efficient cause of that change. There must be a proportion in degree of perfection or reality between effect and cause. The former cannot exceed in actual perfection the active power, and therefore the actual being, of the latter. This is so because we conceive the effect as being produced or actualized _through the operative influence_ of the cause, and _with real dependence_ on this latter; and it is inconceivable that a cause should have power to actualize other being, distinct from itself, which would be of a higher grade of excellence than itself. The nature of efficient causality, of the influence by which the cause is related to its effect, is not easy to determine; it will be discussed at a subsequent stage of our investigations (ch. xi.); but whatever it be, a little reflection should convince us of the truth of the principle just stated: that an effect cannot be more perfect than its cause. The mediaeval scholastics embodied this truth in the formula: _Nemo dat quod non habet_-a formula which we must not interpret in the more restricted and literal sense of the words _giving_ and _having_, lest we be met with the obvious objection that it is by no means necessary for a boy to have a black eye himself in order to give one to his neighbour!

What the formula means is that an agent cannot give to, or produce in, any potential subject, receptive of its causal influence, an actuality which it does not itself possess virtually, or in its active power: that no actuality surpa.s.sing in excellence the actual perfection of the cause itself can be found thus virtually in the active power of the latter.

There is no question of the cause or agent transferring bodily as it were a part of its own actuality to the subject which is undergoing change(75); nor will such crude imagination images help us to understand what real change, under the influence of efficient causality, involves.(76) An a.n.a.lysis of change will enable us to appreciate more fully the real difficulty of explaining it, and the futility of any attempt to account for it without admitting the real, objective validity of the notions of actual and potential being, of active powers or forces and pa.s.sive potentialities in the things that are subject to change.

10. a.n.a.lYSIS OF CHANGE.-_Change_ (_Mutatio_, _Motus_, eta???, ????s??) is one of those simplest concepts which cannot be defined. We may describe it, however, as _the transition of a being from one state to another_. If one thing entirely disappeared and another were subst.i.tuted for it, we should not regard the former as having been changed into the latter. When one thing is put in the place of another, each, no doubt, undergoes a change of place, but neither is changed into the other. So, also, if we were to conceive a thing as absolutely ceasing to exist, as lapsing into nothingness at a given instant, and another as coming into existence out of nothingness at the same instant (and in the same place), we should not consider this double event as const.i.tuting a real change of the former thing into the latter. And although our _senses_ cannot testify to anything beyond _sequence_ in sense phenomena, our _reason_ detects in real change something other than a total subst.i.tution of things for one another, or continuous total cessations and inceptions of existence in things. No doubt, if we conceive the whole phenomenal or perceptible universe and all the beings which const.i.tute this universe as essentially contingent, and therefore dependent for their reality and their actual existence on a Supreme, Necessary Being who created and conserves them, who at any time may cease to conserve any of them, and produce other and new beings _out of nothingness_, then such absolute cessations and inceptions of existence in the world would not be impossible. G.o.d might _annihilate_, _i.e._ cease to conserve in existence, this or that contingent being at any instant, and at any instant _create_ a new contingent being, _i.e._ produce it in its totality from no pre-existing material. But there is no reason to suppose that this is what is constantly taking place in Nature: that all change is simply a series of annihilations and creations. On the contrary, the modes of being which appear and disappear in real change, in the transition of anything from one state to a really different state of being, do not appear _de novo_, _ex nihilo_, as absolute beginnings out of nothingness; or disappear _totaliter_, _in nihilum_, as absolute endings or lapses of reality into nothingness. The real changes which take place in Nature are due to the operation of natural causes. These causes, being finite in their operative powers, cannot create, _i.e._ produce new being from nothingness. They can, however, with the concurrence of the Omnipotent Being, modify existing modes of being, _i.e._ make actual what was only potential in these latter. The notion of change is not verified in the conception of successive annihilations and creations; for there is involved in the former concept not merely the notion of a real difference between the two _actual_ states, that before and that after the change, but also the notion of some _potential_ reality persisting throughout the change, something capable of being actually so and so before the change and actually otherwise after the change. For real change, therefore, we require (1) two positive and really different states of the same being, a ”_terminus a quo_” and a ”_terminus ad quem_”; and (2) a real process of transition whereby something potential becomes actual. In creation there is no real and positive _terminus a quo_; in annihilation there is no real and positive _terminus ad quem_; these therefore are not changes in the proper sense of the term. Sometimes, too, change is affirmed, by purely extrinsic denomination, of a thing in which there is no real change, but only a relation to some other really changing thing. In this sense when an object unknown or unthought of becomes the actual object of somebody's thought or cognition, it is said to ”change,” though the transition from ”unknown” to ”known” involves no real change of state in the object, but only in the knowing subject. If thought were in any true sense ”const.i.tutive” of reality, as many modern philosophers contend, the change in the object would of course be real.

Since, therefore, change consists in this, that a thing which is actually in a given state ceases to be actually such and begins to be actually in another state, it is obvious that there persists throughout the process some reality which is in itself potential and indifferent to either actual state; and that, moreover, something which was actual disappears, while some new actuality appears, in this persisting potentiality. The abiding potential principle is called the _matter_ or _subject_ of the change; the transient actualizing principles are called _forms_. Not all these ”forms”

which precede or result from change are necessarily positive ent.i.ties in themselves: they may be mere _privations_ of other forms (”_privatio_,”

st???s??): not all changes result in the acquisition of a new degree of positive actual being; some result in loss of perfection or actuality.

Still, even in these cases, the state characterized by the less perfect degree of actuality has a determinate actual grade of being which is proper to itself, and which, as such, is not found actually, but only potentially, in the state characterized by the more perfect degree of actuality. When, then, a being changes from a more perfect to a less perfect state, the actuality of this less perfect state cannot be adequately accounted for by seeking it in the antecedent and more perfect state: it is not in this latter state _actually_, but only _potentially_; nor do we account for it by saying that it is ”equivalently” in the greater actuality of the latter state: the two actualizing principles are really distinct, and neither is wholly or even partially the other. The significance of this consideration will appear presently in connection with the scholastic axiom: _Quidquid movetur ab alio movetur_.

Meanwhile we must guard against conceiving the potential or material factor in change as a sort of actual but hidden core of reality which itself persists unchanged throughout; and the formative or actualizing factors as superficially adorning this substratum by constantly replacing one another. Such a subst.i.tution of imagination images for intellectual thought will not help, but rather hinder, all accurate a.n.a.lysis. It is not the potential or material factor in things that changes, nor yet the actualizing or formal factors, but the things themselves; and if ”things”

are subject to ”real change” it is manifest that this fact can be made intelligible, if at all, only by intellectually a.n.a.lysing the things and their changes into const.i.tutive principles or factors which are nor themselves ”things” or ”changes”. Were we to arrive only at principles of the latter sort, so far from explaining anything we would really only have pushed back the problem a step farther. It may be that none of the attempts yet made by philosophers or scientists to offer an ultimate explanation of change is entirely satisfactory,-the scholastic explanation will be gradually outlined in these pages,-but it will be of advantage at least to recognize the shortcomings of theories that are certainly inadequate.