Note (return) — Chapter XII

1. The relation of Actuality to Potentiality is as the Perfect to the Imperfect.--The progress from potentiality to actuality is motion or production (κίνησις or γένεσις). But this motion is transitional, and in itself imperfect--it tends towards an end, but does not include the end in itself. But actuality, if it implies motion, has an end in itself and for itself; it is a motion desirable for its own sake. 731 The relation of the potential to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the unfinished to the finished work, of the unemployed builder to the one at work upon his building, of the seed-corn to the tree, of the man who has the capacity to think, to the man actually engaged in thought. 732 Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown-up tree is the actuality; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this moment in a philosophic condition; indeed, every thing is potential which possesses a principle of development, or of change. Actuality or entelechy, on the other hand, indicates the perfect act, the end gained, the completed actual; that activity in which the act and the completeness of the act fall together--as, for example, to see, to think, where the acting and the completed act are one and the same.