258 SHEiLAH o'flynn brennan 



water as active. This does not presuppose a determinate in- 

 clination in the water either to be warmed or to be cooled," 

 but an intrinsic aptitude for either, which, unlike the indifferent 

 potency in the wood, as the matter of a table, for example, 

 gives rise to a relationship and order to other things in nature. 

 The movements resulting from these relations are natural. Art, 

 on the other hand, would imply an interference, or at least an 

 intervening in this order by the human intellect, extrinsic to 

 nature — an intervention, moreover, usually not aimed at the 

 fulfillment of a natural (i. e., intrinsic) potency .^^ 



In resume, then, a movement corresponding to an intrinsic 

 passive inclination to a determinate act as an end and a good 

 is termed natural, even though the active principle be quite 

 extrinsic to nature. However, natural movements usually take 

 place in subjects having a potency to an act which can be sup- 

 plied by a natural agent; in this case, even when the passive 

 potency is not a determinate inclination to one act but is rather 

 an indeterminate inclination to opposite acts, it is still a case 

 of nature insofar as by these potencies the subject is related 

 to corresponding agents within nature and the order thus estab- 

 lished can be seen as fitting into the general scheme of the 

 universe. The order of appetite and good in the universe as a 

 whole, then, is what determines whether or not a movement is 

 natural. 



ni 



Variations in the Meaning of Nature throughout 

 THE Study of Nature 



Returning now to Aristotle's definition of nature given in 

 the Physics (Bk. II, ch. 1) , we find that there is a qualifica- 

 tion that requires further development, the word 'primarily. 

 And it is with a consideration of this point particularly that 



^^ A passive potency in the general scheme of nature can be related to more 

 than one agent — even to agents producing opposite effects — and therefore it can 

 be ordered to opposite acts, both of which would be a good for the whole. It is the 

 active, not the passive, principle, in both animate and inanimate things, that as 

 nature is determined ad unum. 



"" An exception could be made for those arts that cooperate with nature. 



