118 THE WOELD-ENEEGY 



cally from non-being and from being" (* py ovros, d>Ua 



xa} ovro-). 



Thus Aristotle interprets into clearness what remained 

 a somewhat obscure theory with Heraclitus, namely, that 

 non-being is as the reciprocal of being, and that, as poten- 

 tiality, non-being may be of any degree whatever the 

 greater the degree of reality in any given case the less the 

 degree of potentiality; the less the degree of reality the 

 greater the degree of potentiality. When the rose-bud is 

 real, the rose is the next natural phase of potentiality. 

 When the rose is the real, the next phase of potentiality is 

 decay, etc. And the actual rose is the total round of pos- 

 sibilities of the rose, both the realized and the unrealized. 

 That is, the actual total world is the entire range of both 

 reality and potentiality, of being and of non-being; and 

 every object of the world appealing to the senses, is in 

 constant process or rather it is itself a constant process 

 with both beginning and ceasing, with both being and 

 non-being, as the necessary reciprocal factors of its pro- 

 tean existence. 



Thus motion is inevitable. It is not so difficult to 

 conceive its existence as to conceive its non-existence. 



To this it need hardly be added that Hegel takes, as 

 the starting-point of his famous (though, it is to be 

 feared, little known) dialectical development of the cate- 

 gories of thought (and of reality) this same doctrine of 

 Heraclitus concerning the relation which being and non- 

 being sustain to each other in becoming, though of course 

 with a subtle refinement upon these concepts as they were 

 left by Heraclitus. 



It appears, then, that motion, activity, /becoming, has 

 long been considered as constituting the vital truth of the 



