At the same time we
are living well and have lived well, and are happy and have been
happy. If not, the process would have had sometime to cease, as the
process of making thin ceases: but, as things are, it does not
cease; we are living and have lived. Of these processes, then, we must
call the one set movements, and the other actualities. For every
movement is incomplete-making thin, learning, walking, building; these
are movements, and incomplete at that. For it is not true that at
the same time a thing is walking and has walked, or is building and
has built, or is coming to be and has come to be, or is being moved
and has been moved, but what is being moved is different from what has
been moved, and what is moving from what has moved. But it is the same
thing that at the same time has seen and is seeing, seeing, or is
thinking and has thought. The latter sort of process, then, I call
an actuality, and the former a movement.
7
What, and what kind of thing, the actual is, may be taken as
explained by these and similar considerations. But we must distinguish
when a thing exists potentially and when it does not; for it is not at
any and every time. E.g. is earth potentially a man? No-but rather
when it has already become seed, and perhaps not even then. It is just
as it is with being healed; not everything can be healed by the
medical art or by luck, but there is a certain kind of thing which
is capable of it, and only this is potentially healthy.
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