What is Potentiality? 295 



the two predicates are held in mind together as both to- 

 gether applicable to any concrete developing thing, forbids 

 us to construe real existence altogether apart from the fact 

 that it has a further issue in later career. It is a great 

 merit of Aristotle that he forbade just this attempt to con- 

 sider the energeia apart from the dtmamis. But, neverthe- 

 less, it is true psychologically that real existence as a con- 

 tent-predicate is exhausted by the survey of the backward 

 aspect of the series of changes which give body to reality. 



And it seems also evident at first blush that potential 

 existence is equally concerned with the prospective refer- 

 ence of the thought of things. That this is so is perhaps 

 the one element in the notion of potency that all who use 

 the word would agree upon. But this is inadequate as a 

 description of the category of potentiality. For if that 

 were all, how would it differ from any other thought of the 

 prospective .? We may think of the future career of a thing 

 simply in terms of time ; that, we would probably agree, 

 does not involve potentiality. A particular potency is con- 

 fined to a particular thing, i.e., to a particular series of 

 events making up a more or less isolated career. If only 

 the bare fact of futurity were involved, why should not any 

 new unrolling of career be the potency of anything indis- 

 criminately .-* 



This leads us to see that potency or potentiality, even 

 when used in the abstract, is never free from its concrete 

 reference. And this concrete reference is not that of con- 

 ception in general, only or mainly ; the concrete reference 

 of conception generally is a matter of retrospect, i.e., of the 

 application of the concept to individual things, as far as 

 such application has been justified by historical instances. 

 Indeed, it is the very occurrence of the historical instances 



