If, then, there are any entities or substances such as the
dialecticians say the Ideas are, there must be something much more
scientific than science-itself and something more mobile than
movement-itself; for these will be more of the nature of
actualities, while science-itself and movement-itself are potencies
for these.
Obviously, then, actuality is prior both to potency and to every
principle of change.
9
That the actuality is also better and more valuable than the
good potency is evident from the following argument. Everything of
which we say that it can do something, is alike capable of contraries,
e.g. that of which we say that it can be well is the same as that
which can be ill, and has both potencies at once; for the same potency
is a potency of health and illness, of rest and motion, of building
and throwing down, of being built and being thrown down. The
capacity for contraries, then, is present at the same time; but
contraries cannot be present at the same time, and the actualities
also cannot be present at the same time, e.g. health and illness.
Therefore, while the good must be one of them, the capacity is both
alike, or neither; the actuality, then, is better. Also in the case of
bad things the end or actuality must be worse than the potency; for
that which 'can' is both contraries alike. Clearly, then, the bad does
not exist apart from bad things; for the bad is in its nature
posterior to the potency. And therefore we may also say that in the
things which are from the beginning, i.
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