296 The Origin of a 'Thing' and its Nature 



which has given rise to the concept, and it generalizes 

 them. 



So when we put ourselves at the point of view of the 

 concrete, we have to ask what is actually meant by us when 

 we say a thing exists potentially, over and above the mere 

 meaning that the thing is to exist in the future. We have 

 seen that one added element of meaning is that the thing 

 which is to exist in the future is in some way tied down in 

 its manifestations to something that already exists actually ; 

 it must be the potentiality of some one thing in order to be 

 a potentiality at all. Now, what more can it be ? 



Of course the ordinary answer is at once on our lips: the 

 answer that the bond between the thing that is and the 

 thing that is to be is the bond of causation. The poten- 

 tiality is the unexpressed causal 'efBcacy' of the thing that 

 is. But when we come to ask what this means, we find 

 that we are hiding behind one of the screens of common 

 sense. The very fact of cause, whatever bond it may rep- 

 resent from an ontological point of view, is at least a fact of 

 career. The effect is a further statement of the career of 

 the thing called the cause. Now, to say that the potency 

 of a thing is its unexpressed causal power, is only to say 

 that the thing has not finished its career, and that is a part 

 of the notion of a thing in general. That fact alone does 

 not in any way define the future career for us, except in the 

 way of repetition of past career. We merely expect the 

 thing to do what it has done before, not to become some 

 new thing out of the old. In short, the category of causation 

 is not adequate, since it construes all career retrospectively. 



We have, therefore, two positions so far, finding (i) that 

 every potency is the potency of a thing, and this means 

 that it gets its content in some way from the historical 



