208 HUMANISM 



XII 



we move and live, rather than the system of immutable 

 and timeless laws which we devise for its explanation. 

 Hence Plato s changeless ousiai seem to him too distant 

 and divorced to explain the world. A conception of 

 Substance which is to explain the facts of the world must 

 not subsist in an impassible immutability in the super- 

 celestial seclusion of a transcendent TOTTO? vorjros : if 

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

 potentiality (SiWyu-i?). If ovala, therefore, is not immanent 

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

 remains an inert and secluded Svvafjus, 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 (energeia}. Hence the 

 universal (/ca06\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 (evepyeia) by the way it actually works. Not 

 that Aristotle denies the validity of the considerations 

 which led Plato to frame his conception of ovala ; 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 Rvepyeia and not Awa/u?, 

 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 aperr) is the Good, and contends that 

 the Good, RvSai/Aovia, must be the exercise of the et&amp;lt;? 

 (Svz/a/u?), evepyeta tear dpertjv, A merely statical treat 

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

 not merely dyadrj (f&amp;gt;v&amp;lt;Tis, it is dyadrj (frvais in exercise, and 

 a disposition (et?) 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 recognized that into this technical term 



