24-27. This is the nearest approach in Aristotle to the use of rpary vAn in the sense of entirely formless matter. But even here it does not mean that, but matter with the minimum of form. If there is no material, x, out of which fire is made, so that it can be called x-en, then fire is first matter, but it will still have the definite character of fire. Cf. A. 101598 n.
27. ot ré8e tt odca. The sentence must be interpreted in the light of what follows in ll. 27-36. Aristotle there distinguishes the case in which the substratum is a ‘this’ from that in which it is not. The substratum of a zdfos is a ‘this’ or substance; the substratum of
a substance is matter. An opposition is therefore wanted between tAy and 76d tu Or ovata, and we should read od réd€ Tt odaoa OF od TddE TL kal ovata.
The difference which Aristotle here points out is that between two levels at which the cleavage between substratum and attributes may be made. You may distinguish accidental attributes from their subject, and in this case the subject is a substratum containing certain essential characteristics ; or again you may distinguish the essential charac- teristics from the substratum to which they belong, and in this case the substratum is bare unqualified matter.
35. For the description of the form as 168 tu cf. A. t017) 25 n.
36- 2. kat dp0Gs ...ddpiota. Aristotle is struck by the fact that we not only (1), if A is the matter of B, describe B by an adjective derived from the name of A, but also (2), if C is an accidental attri- bute of D, describe D by an adjective derived (as he suggests) from the name of C. This coincidence is, he thinks, natural, because A, dAn, and C, a6, are both indefinite.
Aristotle often, as here, says that we describe things rapwvvpws by words derived from the names of qualities. Cf. Ca¢. 1812, 613, 10% 28, Zop. 111° 33-4. He can hardly have thought that the word Aevxdv was derived from the word Aevkdrns. What he means rather is that when we say a man is white we are not saying that he is a certain entity, but that he is qualified by the possession of a certain entity, whiteness. ‘ White’, though linguistically simpler and earlier than ‘ whiteness ’, stands for a more complex meaning, viz. ‘ qualified by whiteness ’, just as ‘ wooden’ stands for a more complex meaning than ‘wood’.
by. What is the meaning of saying that both vAy and wd6y are in- definite? Matter is 76 ddpucrov piv dpicOjvar Kal peracyeiy <idovs
258 Commentary
zwés (A. 989” 18); it is indefinite in the sense that it has (relatively to that whose matter it is) no form or character. aan (such as whiteness) are indefinite not in the sense of having no character but in the sense of being ‘ floating universals’, not in themselves fixed down to any one substance but capable of belonging to any one out of many. Now since substances on the one hand have a character and on the other hand are definite individuals, no substance can be said to de its matter (e.g. ‘ wood’) or its waOos (e.g. ‘ whiteness’) but only to be made of its matter (‘ wooden’) or characterized by its waos (‘ white’).
Actuality prior to potency (ch. 8).
1049 4. <Actuality is prior to potency, not only to that which is a principle of change in another thing or in the thing itself gua other, but to any principle of change or rest. Nature is a principle of change, but in the thing itself gza itself.
10. Actuality is prior to any such principle in definition and in substance, and in a sense in time; (1) in definition, for what is ‘capable’ is so by being able to be active; thus knowledge of the potency presupposes knowledge of the actuality.
17. (2) In time an actual member of a species precedes any poten- tial member, though the individual is potential before it is actual ;
24. the potential is actualized by another individual which exists actually—man by man, musician by musician.
29. Hence it is thought that one cannot be a builder if one has built nothing, whence arises the sophistic objection that a learner without having an art has to do that which it is the business of the art to do.
35. The answer is that since, of that which is coming to be, something must have already come to be, the learner must already partially have the art.
1050* 4. (3) In substance actuality is prior, (z) because what is posterior in genesis is prior in substance, since it already possesses its form,
7. and because everything that comes to be moves towards an origin, i.e. an end, and activity is the end of potency; animals have sight in order that they may see, they do not see in order that they may have sight.
15. Further, matter exists potentially just because it can come to its form; when it exists actually it is in its form. The same is true where the end is a movement; teachers think they have attained their end when they exhibit their pupils at work; and so it is too
with nature. The work is the end, and the actuality is the work; thus evépyeva (actuality), which is derived from épyov (work), comes to mean much the same as évreAéyeva, (complete reality).
23. In some cases the exercise is the ultimate thing (e.g. sight), while in others there is a separate result (e.g. a house as well as the act of building reSults from the building art); the actuality is in the first case the end, in the second at any rate more of an end than the potency.
30. Where there is a separate result, the actuality is in the thing made (the act of building is in the thing built); where there is not, it is in the agent (seeing is in the man who sees).
bg. Thus substance or form is actuality, and therefore actuality is prior in substance to potency; and we have seen (1049” 17-29) that in time actuality presupposes actuality foes back to that of the prime mover.
6. (0) Actuality is prior in substance in a stricter sense of ‘prior in substance’. For eternal things are prior to perishable, and no eternal thing exists potentially. Everything that is capable of being is also capable of not being, and therefore perishable,
14. either absolutely in respect of its substance, or in some respect, i.e. capable of changing its place, quantity, or quality. What is not in the absolute sense perishable cannot ‘exist potentially’ in the absolute sense (though it may in a qualified sense),
20. Nor can eternal movement so exist, nor an eternal moved object, if there are such things. Thus there is no fear that the sun, stars, and heavens will ever come to rest, nor do they tire of movement ; for it is only matter and the capacity for the opposite (i.e. for resting) that can make movement laborious.
28. Even the things which are in continual transformation, like earth and fire, imitate the imperishable things, for they have eternal movement by their own nature.
go. All other potencies are potencies for contradictories. Rational potencies are capable of opposite actualizations, and irrational potencies produce opposites according as they are present or absent.
34. It may be objected to the Ideas that since ‘science itself’ is a potency, there must be an actuality which is more ‘scientific than it; and so in other cases.
1049) 4. Sidproro., A, I.
8. The false reading in EJ has arisen, as Bz. points out, from a dittography of év raird yevet and a subsequent attempt to make sense of the result by emendation.
260 Commentary
13. 73 mpdtas Suvardy, cf. duvdpews 7 A€yerar wdALoTa Kvpins, TO45? 35. Aristotle means dvvapus in the sense not of potentiality but of power in relation to movement, the sense discussed in chs. 1-5.
18. Td TA cider 75 atts evepyodv mpdtepoy, ‘the actual which is iden- tical in species is prior’. I.e. prior to~the potential member of a species (e.g. to a seed of corn) there must be an actual member of the species.
21. % Udy answers to rod dvOpwrov, TS oTéppa. to Tod Girov, Td 6part- kév tO Tod SpavTos. o7épya is frequently used of the male element in animal generation, but that is not the matter or potentiality of the offspring, but its formal and efficient cause, so that omépya here probably means (as it often does in Aristotle) the seed of a plant. In 2 1-3, 14, 15 Aristotle writes without reference to his doctrine of the parts played by the male and female elements in generation, but he has it in view in ll. 24-26 below, and it is better to interpret here in accor- dance with it.
24-25. del yap... dvros does not prove Aristotle’s point. He has said that there must be an actual member of the species prior to the poten- tial member of the species. ‘This is not proved by pointing out that an actual member is needed in order to transform the potential member into an actual member. He would have proved his point (as regards animal generation) if he had referred not to the male parent which (on his theory) transforms the matter, but to the female parent which provides the matter. The internal logic of ll, 23-25 would be right if we could suppose rovrwy in |, 23 to refer to avOpwros Kat otros kal épHv, but it must refer to 7 vAn.Kal 76 oméeppa kal 76 6parixéy or it would not illustrate the main thesis that actuality is prior to potentiality.
25. otov avOpwios é& avOpdmov. é& is used loosely, since what Aristotle means to exemplify is not é« rod duvdjer dvtos but td evep- yela. Ovros.
26. pouvorkds bad pouotkod, i.e. the musical faculty in A can be actualized only by the teaching of B who is already a musician.
27. elpntar dé év Tols Tmepl THs ovatus Ndyots, Z. 7, 8.
29-1050* 3. Aristotle here passes to a second proof of the priority of actuality to potentiality in time. It must be prior because one can- not have the potentiality of building (for example) without having en- gaged in the actuality. This is said (I. 29) to be a corollary of the principle to which Aristotle has been referring in Il. 17-27, that a potential A can be made into an actual A only by a member of the same species. This principle might be applied in either of two ways; it might be said (1) that a potential builder can be transformed into an actual builder only by the teaching of another actual builder, or (2) that a potency of building can be transformed into an actuality of building only by another actuality of building, i.e. that by means of imperfect and inartistic acts of building (cf. what the Z7zcs calls, in a similar discussion, doing ypaypariuov tu but not ypapyparikds, 1105°24) the potentiality of building comes to be actualized in
perfect and artistic acts of building. Now (1) is irrelevant to what Aristotle says in > 29-32, and even (2) does not exactly corre- spond to it. For (2) could only show that the potentiality needs, for its actuahzation, another actuality, whereas what Aristotle claims in ll. 29-32 is that it presupposes, as a condition of its exzstence, another actuality. At first sight it looks as if there were the same confusion as seems to exist at ]. 24. But Aristotle’s meaning is that though a bare dvvapus of building may exist in a man before he has done any building, such a man is not an oixodduos. Being an oikoddpos is not a bare dvvayus but a egis, and this presupposes evepyeto.. ;
35- Add introduces Aristotle’s answer to the sophistical objection, and should, as Bz. saw, have a full stop before it.