) And so even if one has a rational
wish, or an appetite, to do two things or contrary things at the
same time, one will not do them; for it is not on these terms that one
has the potency for them, nor is it a potency of doing both at the
same time, since one will do the things which it is a potency of
doing, on the terms on which one has the potency.
6
Since we have treated of the kind of potency which is related to
movement, let us discuss actuality-what, and what kind of thing,
actuality is. For in the course of our analysis it will also become
clear, with regard to the potential, that we not only ascribe
potency to that whose nature it is to move something else, or to be
moved by something else, either without qualification or in some
particular way, but also use the word in another sense, which is the
reason of the inquiry in the course of which we have discussed these
previous senses also. Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not
in the way which we express by 'potentially'; we say that potentially,
for instance, a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the
half-line is in the whole, because it might be separated out, and we
call even the man who is not studying a man of science, if he is
capable of studying; the thing that stands in contrast to each of
these exists actually. Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases
by induction, and we must not seek a definition of everything but be
content to grasp the analogy, that it is as that which is building
is to that which is capable of building, and the waking to the
sleeping, and that which is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but
has sight, and that which has been shaped out of the matter to the
matter, and that which has been wrought up to the unwrought.
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