Note 81 — Chapter IX · THE SUPREME PROBLEMS.

It seems clear that so far as human thought goes ‘possibility’ is only an abstraction from that which ‘a man can do,’ reached by widening the subject ‘man’ so as to include both superhuman powers and half-personified unseen forces. In other words δυνατόν is derived from δύναται, possibilitas from potest. Such a combination as fortuna potest, though quite common, is really a contradiction in terms.