208 HUMANISM xn 



not subsist in an impassible immutability in the super- 

 celestial seclusion of a transcendent TOTTO? VOIJTOS : if 

 Substance meant no more than this, it would be a mere 

 potentiality (SiW/u?). If ovaia, therefore, is not immanent 

 and does not assert itself in the world of phenomena, but 

 remains an inert and secluded SiW/w?, it is lifeless and 

 worthless. For the potentiality owes its visibility, its 

 value, nay, its very existence, to the glow shed upon it 

 by the actual exercise of function {energeid}. Hence the 

 universal (ica06\ov*), if it is to be truly valuable either 

 for science or for practice, must be in the world and 

 pervade it ; or, in his technical phrase, must display itself 

 in actuality (evepyela) by the way it actually works. Not 

 that Aristotle denies the validity of the considerations 

 which led Plato to frame his conception of ovaia ; he 

 denies only its adequacy. In his anxiety to escape out 

 of the Heraclitean flux Plato had overshot the mark : 

 he had committed himself to a conception of Being too 

 rigid and remote to explain the Becoming of phenomena. 

 The highest conception must be Evepyeia and not AiWyiu?, 

 the actual functioning of a substance whose real nature 

 is only so revealed. 



This too is the ultimate reason why, in his Ethics, 

 Aristotle denies that apery is the Good, and contends that 

 the Good, EuSat/AoWa, must be the exercise of the eft? 

 (SiW/us), evepyeia tear apenjv. A merely statical treat 

 ment of the truly valuable will not suffice : the Good is 

 not merely ajadr) &amp;lt;j&amp;gt;i/crt&amp;lt;?, it is ayaOrj &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;vcrt? in exercise, and 

 a disposition (49) is only valuable as the basis and 

 potentiality of an evepyeia. In this way the whole of 

 Aristotle s philosophy, both in its constructive and in its 

 critical aspects as a reply to Plato, may be enunciated in 

 the one word, Energeia? It has indeed always been 

 more or less recognised that into this technical term 

 Aristotle has packed all that was most distinctive, most 

 original, most fundamental, and most profound in his 

 philosophy. Now in philosophy all real originality is 

 constructive for you cannot pull down without a standing 

 ground whence to effect the operation and all real con- 



