Movements of the Soul in De Anima

Aristotle - III, 4 - 429b25 (quoted latin/engl Aquinas - ad 2 de 22.1)
“The problem might be suggested: if thinking is a passive affection, the if mind is simple and impassible and has nothing in common with anything else, as Anaxagoras says, how can it come to think at all? For interaction between two factors is held to require a precedent community of nature between the factors. Again it might be asked, is mind a possible object of thought to itself? For if mind is thinkable per se and what is thinkable is in kind one and the same, then either a) mind will belong to everything, or b) mind will contain some element common to it with all other realities which makes them thinkable.
a) have we not already disposed of the difficulty about interaction involving a common element, when we said (15-24) that mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable, although actually it is nothing until it has thought? What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind.
2) Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For a) in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its objecta re identical. (Why mind is not always thinking we shall consider later). B) In the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thought is only potentially present. It follows that while they will not have mind in them (for mind is a potentiality of them only in so far as they are capable of being disengaged from matter) mind may yet be thinkable.
Ch. 5 - Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, 1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, 2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found in the soul. And in fact mind as we have described it (ch.4) is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of aking all things: this is a sort of positive state like light, for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the atter which it forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time pior to actual knowledge _________________________

Bk.1.2.403b28
Some say that what originates movement is both pre-eminently and primarily soul; believing that what is not itself moved cannot originate movement in another they arrived at the view that soul belongs to the class of things in movement (talks about Democritus and the soul as sort of fire or hot substance - similarity w/ Pythagoreans - motes in air or what moved them to be soul - others of the same tendency - the soul as that which moves itself; all seem to hold the view that movement is what is closest to the nature of soul, and that while all else is moved by soul, it alone moves itself. This belief arises from their never seeing anything originating movement which is not first itself moved….
1.2.404b8
All those then, who had special regard to the fact that what has soul in it is moved, adopted the view that soul is to be identified with what is eminently originative of movement. All, on the other hand, who looked to the fact that what the osul in it knows or perceives what is, identify soul with the principle or principles of Nature.(…) 404b27
Some thinkers, accepting both premises, viz. that the soul is both originative of movement and cognitive, have compounded it of both and declared the soul to be a self-moving number - shows how some considered it as soul and mind - some more rude thinkers thinking blood, water, etc. )

1.3.405b32
We must begin our examination with movement; for, doubtless not only is it false that the essence of soul is correctly described by those who say that it is what moves (or is capable of moving) itself, but it is an impossibility that movement should be even an attribute of it.
We have already pointed out that there is no necessity that what originates movement should itself be moved.
There are two senses in which anything may be moved - either a) indirectly, owing to something other than itself or b) directly, owing to itself. Things are "indirectly moved" which are moved as being contained in something which is moved, e.g. sailors in a ship, for they are moved in a different sense from that in which the ship is moved; the ship is ‘directly moved,’ they are ‘indirectly moved,’ because they are in a moving vessel. Recognizing the double sense of ‘being moved,’ what we have to consider now is whether the soul is ‘directly moved’ and participates in such direct movement.
There are four species of movement,- locomotion, alteration, diminution, growth; - this compares to Aquinas how?
Consequently, if the soul is moved, it must be moved with one or several or all of the species of movement. Now if its movement is not incidental, there must be a movement natural to it, and, if so, as all the species enumerated involve place, place must be natural to it. But if the essence of soul be to move itself, its being moved cannot be incidental to it, as it is to what is white or three cubits long; they too can be moved, but only incidentally - what is moved Is that of which ’white’ and ’three cubits long’ are the attributes, the body in which they inhere; hence they have no place, but if the soul naturally partakes in movement, it follows that it must have a place.
Further, if there be a movement natural to the soul, there must be a counter- movement unnatural to it, and conversely. Same applies to rest as to movement
(Doesn’t Aquinas talk about the natural movement of the soul, which is pursuit sometimes and sometimes dilation )
; for the terminus ad quem of a thing’s natural movement is the place o f its natural rest, and similarly the terminus ad quem of its enforced movement is the place of its enforced rest. But what meaning can be attached to enforced movements or rests of the soul, it is difficult even to imagine.
Further, if the natural movement of the soul be upward, the soul must be fire; if downward, it must be earth; for upward and downward movements are the definitory characteristics of these bodies. The same reasoning applies to the intermediate movements, termini, and bodies. Further, since the soul is observed to originate movement in the body, it is reasonable to suppose that it transmits to the body the movements by which it itself is moved, and so, reversing the order, we may infer from the movements of the body back to similar movements of the soul. Now the body is moved from place to place with movements of locomotion. Hence it would follow that the soul too must in accordance with the body change either its place as a whole or the relative places of its parts. This carries with it the possibility that the soul might even quit its body and re-enter it, and with this would be involved the possibility of a resurrection of animals from the dead. But, it may be contended, the soul can be moved indirectly by something else; for an animal can be pushed out of its course. (Cross-reference - that to whose essence belongs the power of being moved by itself, cannot be moved by something else except incidentally (1.2.406b9) just as what is good by or in itself cannot owe its goodness to something external to it or to some end to which it is a means).

Transposing to an Aquinas, moral context. In terms of the "end, actions, passions" - it would be interesting to see it as a movement - check his text to see if this kind of thing works…. What precisely is the relation of man to his ‘last end’ or to ‘happines’???
If the soul is moved, the most probable view is that what moves it is sensible things (there is a note by the editor saying in which case the movement can only be ‘incidental’, for as we shall see later, it is really he bodily organ of sensation that then is ‘moved’. Thomas distinguishes senses apprehensive and then appetitive - one precedes t’other)
We must note also that, if the soul moves itself (406b12) it must be the mover itself that is moved, so that it follows that if movmenet is in every case a displacement of that which is in movement, in that respect in which it is said to be moved, the movement of the soul must be a departure from its essential nature, at least if its self-movement is essential to it, not incidentals.
(Some go so far as to hold that the movements which the soul imparts to the body in which it is are the same in kind as those with which it itself is moved - uses example of Democritus - quicksilver in wooden Aphrodite - mentions philosopher - he brings up the objection of ‘rest’ and also that the soul appears to originate movement in animals through intention or process of thinking. INTENSIO!!!!!!!
Cites Timaeus trying to give a physical account of how the soul moves the body.
"Now in the first place it is a mistake to say that the soul is spatial magnitude. It is evident that Plato means the soul of the whole to be like the sort of soul which is called mind - not like the sensitive or the desiderative soul, for the movements of neither of these are circular. Now mind is one and continuous in the sense in which the process of thinking is so, and thinking is identical with the thoughts which are its parts; these have a serial unity like that of number, not a unity like that of a spatial magnitude. Hence mind cannot have that kind of unity either; mind is either without parts or is continuous in some other way than that which characterizes a spatial magnitude.
How, indeed, if it were a spatial magnitude, could mind possibly think? Will it think with any one indifferently of its parts? In this case, the ‘part’ must be understood either in the sense of a spatial magnitude or in the sense of a point (if a point can be called a part of a spatial magnitude). IF we accept the latter alternative, the points being infinite in number, obviously the mind can never exhaustively traverse them; if the former, the mind must think the same thing over and over again, indeed and infinite number of times (whereas it is manifestly possible to think a thing once only). If contact of any part whatsoever of itself with the object is all that is required, why need mind move in a circle, or indeed posses magnitude at all? On the other hand, if contact with the whole circle is necessary, what meaning can be given to the contact of the parts? Further, how could what has no parts think what has parts, or what has parts think of what has none? We must identified the circle referred to with mind; for it is mind whose movement is thinking, and I ti is the circle whose movement is revolutions, ot hat I thinking is a movement of revolution, the circle which has this characteristic movement must be mind.
If the circular movement is eternal, there must be something which mind is always thinking - what can this be? For all practical processes of thinking have limits- they all go on for the sake of something outide the process, and all theoretical processes come to a close in the same way as the phrases in speech which express processes and results of thinking. Every such linguistic phrase is either definitory or demonstrative.
Very important stuff - just getting tired. Nex tpage.
Next division of 15
"The view we have just been examining, in company with most theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all join the soul to a body or place it in a body, without adding any specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two interagents. All, however, that these thinkers do is to descirbe the specific characteristics of the soul; they do not try to determine anything about the body which is to conain it, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean myths, that any soul could be clothed upon with any body - an absurd view, for each body seems to have a form and a shape of its own. It is as absurd as to say that the art of carpentry could embody itself in flutes; each art must use its tools, each soul its body.

p. 553 - important discussion beforehand
Some hold that the soul is divisible, and that one part thinks, another desires. If, then, its nature admits of its being divided, what can it be that holds the parts together? Surely not the body; on the contrary it seems rather to be the soul that holds the body together; at an rate when the soul departs the body disintegrates and decays. If then, there is something else which makes the soul one, this unifying agency would have the best right to the name of soul,a dn we shall have to repeat for it the question: Is it one or multipartite? If it is one, why not at once admit that ‘the soul’ is one? If it has parts, once more the question must be put: what holds its partstogerher, and so on ad infinitum?
BK TWO
Starting fresh - as though
We are in the habit of recognizing one determinate kind of what is, substance, and in several sneses a) matter or that which is in itself is not ‘a this’ and b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which a thing si called ‘a this’
And thirdly in the sense of that which is compounded of botha) and b).
Now matter is potentiality, form actuality, of the latter there aret wo grades related to one another as eg. Knowledge to the exercise of knowledge.

Skip skip skip -
That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it.
The body so described is a body which is organized. The parts of plants in spite of their extreme simplicity or ‘organ’s - eg. The leaf serves to shelter the
We have now given an answer to the question, What is soul? An answer which applies to it in its full extent. It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing’s essence. That means that it is ‘the essential whatness’ of a body of the character just assigned. Suppose that what is literally an ‘organ’, like an axe, were a natural body, its’essential whatness’ would have been its essence, and so its soul; if this disappeared from it, it would have ceased to be an axe, except in name. As it is, it is just an axe; it wants the character which is required to make its whatness or formidable essence a soul; for that, it would have had to be a natural body of a particular kind, viz. one having in in itself the power of setting itself in movement and arresting itself. Next, apply this doctrine in the case of the ‘parts’ of the living body. Suppose that the eye were an animal - sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name - it is no more a real eye than the eye of a stateu or of a painted figure. We must now extend our consideration from the ‘parts’ to the whole living body; for what the departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such.

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413b24
We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kid of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; itaone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain statements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition.
If opining is distinct from perceiving, to be capable of opinning and to be capable of perceiving must be distinct, and so with all the other forms of living above enumerated. Fruther, some animals possess all these parts of soul, some certain of them only, others one only (this is what enables us to classify animals) the cause must be considered later. A similar arrangement is found also within the field of the senses; some classes of animals have all the senses, some only certain of them, others only one, the most indispensable, touch.
Since ht expression ’that whereby we live and perceive’ has two meanings, just like the expression ’that whereby we know’ that may mean either a) knowledge or b) the soul, for we can speak of knowing by ior with either, and similarly that whereby we are in health may be either a) health or b) the body or some part of the body; and since of the two terms thus contrasted knowledge or health is the name of a form, essence or ratio, or if we so xpress it an actuality of a recipient matter - knowledge of what is capable of knowing, health of what is capable of being made healthy (for the operation of that which is capale of originating change terminates and has its seat in what is changed or altered); further, since it is the soul by or with which primarily we live, perceive, and think: it follows that the osul must be a ratio or formidable essence, not a matter or subject. For, as we said, the word substance has three meanings - form, matter, and the complex of both - and of these three what is called matter is potentiality, what is called form actuality. Since then the complex here is the living thing, the body cannot be the actuality of the soul; it is the soul which is the actuality of a certain kind of body. 414a19
Hence the rightness of the view that the soul cannot e without a body, while it cannot be a body; it is not a body but something relative to a body. That is why it is in a body, and a body of a definite ind. It was a mistake, therefore, to do as former thinkers did, merely to fit it inot a body without adding a definite specification of the kind or character of that body Reflection confirms the observed fact; the actuality of any given thing can only be realized in what is already potentially that thing, I.e. in a matter of its own appropriate to it. (Hence the passions belonging to the “perfection” of man?)
From all this it follows that soul is an actuality or formidable essence of something that possesses a potentiality of being be-souled.
Of the psychic powers above enumerated some kidns of living things, as we have said, possess all, some less than all, others one only. Those we have mentioned are the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking. Plants have none but the firs, the nutritive, while another order of living things has this plus the sensory. If any order of living things has the sensory, it must also have the appetitive; for appetitive is the genus of which desire, passion, and wish are the species; now all animals have one sense at least, viz. touch, and whatever has a sense has the capacity for pleasure and pain and therefore has pleasant and painful objects present to it, and wherever these are present, there is desire, for desire is just appetition of what is pleasant.
Furthermore, all animals have the snese for food (for touch is the sense for food); the food of all living things consists of what is dry, moist, hot, cold, and these are the qualities apprehended by touch; all other sensible qualities are apprehended by touch only indirectly. Sounds, colours, and odors contribute nothing to nutriment; flavors fall within the field fo ftangible qualities.
Hunger and thirst/forms of desire, hunger desire for dry and hot, thirst desire for cold and moist, flavour a sort of seaosoning added to both - we must later clear up these points, but at present it may be enough to say that all animals that possess the sense of touch have also appetition.
APPETITE and SENSE OF TOUCH
The case of imaginiation is obscure; must examine it later.
Certain kinds of animals posses additionally the power of locomotion, and still another order of animate beings, I.e. man and possibly another order like man or superior to him, the power of thinking, I.e. mind. It is now evident that a single dfinition can be given of soul only in the same sense as onec an be given of figure. For, as in that case there is no figure distinguishable and aprt from triangle, etc. and so there is no soul apart form the forms of soul just enumerated.
- talks about what is at stake in a definition of more than one thing - using figure as example
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Ch. 4, 415.14
Nec. For student of these forms of soul first to find a definition of each, expressive of what it is, and then to investigate its derivative properties, etc. But if we are to express which each is, viz. what the thinking power is, or the perceptive, or the nutritive, we must go farther back and first give an account of thinking o perceiving, for in the order of investigation the question of what an agent does precedes the question, what enables it to do what it does.
If this is correct, we must on the same ground go yet another step farther back and have some clear view of the objects of each; thus we must start with these objects, e.g. with food, with what is perceptible, or with what is intelligible.
It follows that first of all we must treat of nutrition and reporduction, for the nutritive soul is found along with all the others and is the most primitive and widely distributed power of soul, being indeed that one in virtue of which all ar said to have life….
Acts in which it manifests itself:
reproduction and use of food


Anyway - ON TO SENSATION!!!!!
Let us now speak of sensations in th widest sense. Sensation depends, as we have said, on a process of ovment or affection from without, for it is held to be some sor to change of quality. Now somet hinkers assert hat like is affected only by like; in what sense this is possible and in what sense impossible, we have explained in our general discussion of acting and being acted upon.
Sent to De Gen and Corru. 323b18ff
Begins with bk.1 ch. 7 - end of last chapter describes ‘action’ and ‘passion’
323b3
The trad. Theories on the subject are conflicting - for i0 most thinkers are unanimous in maintaining a) that ‘like’ is always unaffected by ‘like’, because (as they argue) neither of two ‘likes’ is more apt than the other either to act or to suffer action, since all the properties which belong to the one belong identically and in the same degree to the other; and b) that ‘unlikes’ I.e. ‘different’, are by nature such as to act and suffer action reciprocally. For even when the smaller fire is destroyed by the greater, it suffers this effect (they say) owing to its ‘contrariety’ - since the great is contrary to the small. But ii) Democritus dissented from all other thinkers and maintained a theory peculiar to himself. He asserts that agent and patineta re identical, I.e. ‘like’. It is not possible (he says) that ‘others’, I.e. ‘different’ should suffer action from one another: on the contrary, even if two things, being ‘others’, do act in some way on one another, this happens to them not qua ‘others’ but qua possessing an identical property.
Such, then, are the traditional theories, and it looks as if the statements of their advocates were in manifest conflict. But the reason of this conflict is that each group is in fact stating a part, whereas they ought to have taken a comprehensive view of the subject as a whole. For I) if A and B are ‘like’ - absolutely and in all respects without difference from one another - it is reasonable to infer that neither is in any way affected by the other. Why, indeed, should either of them tend to act any more than the other? Moreover, if ‘like’ can be affected by ‘like’, a thing can also be affected by itself: and yet if that were so - if ‘like’ tended in fact to act qua ‘like’ - there would be nothing indestructible or immovable, for everything would move itself. And ii) the same consequence follows if A and B are absolutely ‘other’, I.e. in no respect identical. Whiteness could not be affected in any way by line nor line by whiteness - except perhaps ‘coincidentally’, viz. if the line happened to be white or black; for unless two things either are, or are composed of, ‘contraries’ neither drives the other out of its natural condition. But iii) since only those things which either involve a ‘contrariety’ or are ‘contraries’ - and not any things selected at random - are such as to suffer action and to act, agent and patient must be ‘like’ (I.e. identical) in kind and yet ‘unlike’ (I.e. contrary_ in species. (For it is a law of nature that body is affected by body, flavour by flavour, colour by colour, and so in general what belongs to any kind by a member of the same kind -t he reason being that ‘contraries’ are in every case within a single identical kind, and it is ‘contraries’ which reciprocally act and suffer action.) Hence agent and patient must be in one sense identical, but in another sense other than (I.e. ‘unlike’) one another. And since a) patient and agent are generically identical (I.e. ‘like’) but specifically ‘unlike’, while b) it is ‘contrarires’ that exhibit this character: it is clear that ‘contraries’ and their ‘intermediates’ are such as to suffer action and to act reciprocally - for indeed it is these that constitute the entire sphere of passing-away and coming-to0be.
We can now understand why fire heats and the cold thing cools, and in general why the active thing assimilates to itself the patient.
For agent and patient are contrary to one another, and coming-to-be is a process into the contrary: hence the patient must change into the agent, since it is only thus that coming-to-be will be a process into the contrary. And, again, it is intelligible that the advocates of both views, although their theories are not the same, are yet in contact with the nature of the facts. For sometimes we speak of the substratum as suffering action (e.g. of ‘the man’ as being healed, being warmed nad chilled, and similarly in al the other cases) but at the other times we say “what is cold is being warmed” “what is sick is being healed” and in
both these ways of speaking we express the truth, since in one sense it is the ‘matter’ while in another sense it is the ‘contrary’ which suffers action.
(actually I don’t know where that is from - from before - I guess I read indefinitely because I’m now in bk two ch. 5)
DE ANIMA LEFT OF P. 565 - Now working on De gen et corrupt. - THIS IS WHERE I WENT INTO DE generatione et corruptione…
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SENSATION
Bk 2 ch. 5
Let us now speak of sensations in th widest sense. Sensation depends, as we have said, on a process of ovment or affection from without, for it is held to be some sor to change of quality. Now somet hinkers assert hat like is affected only by like; in what sense this is possible and in what sense impossible, we have explained in our general discussion of acting and being acted upon.
Here arises a problem: why do we not perceive the senses themselves as well as the external objects of sense, or why without the stimulatiopn of external objects tdo they not produce sensation, seeing that they contain in themselves fire, earth, and all the other elements, which are the direct or indirect objects of sense? It is clear that what is sensitive is so only potentially, not actually. The power of sense is parallel to what is combustible, for that never ignites itself spontaneously, but requires an agent which has the power of starting ignition; otherwise it could have set itself on fire, and would not have needed actual fire to set it ablaze.
In reply we must recall that we use the word ’perceive’ in two ways, for we say a) that what hast he power to hear or see ‘sees’ or ‘hears’ even thought it is at that moment asleep, and also b) that what is actually seeing or hearing, ‘sees’ or ‘hears’. Hence ‘sense’ too must have two meanings, sense potential, and sense actual. Similarly, ‘to be a sentinent’ means either a) to have a certain power or b) to manifest a certain activity.
To begin with, for a time, let us speak as if there were no difference between I) being moved or affected and ii) being active, for movement is a kind of activity - an imperfect kind, as has elsewhere been explained (Phys 201b31, 257b 8)
Everthing that is acted upon or moved is acted upon by an agnet which is actually at work. Hence it is that in one sense, as has already been stated (416a 29-b9), what acts and what is acted upon are like, in another unlike, I.e. prior to
and during the change the two factors are unlike, after it like.

But we must now distinguish not only between what is potential and what is actual but also different senses in which things can be said to be potential or actual; up to now we have been speaking as if each of these phrases had only one sense. We can speak of something as ‘a knower’ either a) as when we say that man is a knower, meaing that man falls within the class of beings that know or have knowledge, or b) as when we are speaking of a man who psosess a knowledge of grammar; each of these is so called as having in him a certain potentiality, but there is a difference between their respective potentialities, the one a) being a potential knower, because his kind or matter is such and such, the other b), because he can in the absnece of any external counteracting cause realize his knowledge in actual nowing at will. This implies a third meaning of ‘a knower’ c) one who is already realizing his knowledge - he is a knower in actuality and in the most proper sense is knowing, e.g. this A.

Both the former are potential knowers, who realize their respective potentialities, the one a) by change of quality, I.e. repeated transitions from one state to its opposite under instrcution, the other b) bt the transition from the inactie possession of snese or grammer to their active exercise. The two kinds of trnasition are distinct.

Also the expression ‘to be acted upon’ has more than one meaning; it may mean either a) the extinction of one of two contraries by the other, or b) the maintenance of what is potential by the agency of what is actual and already like what is acted upon, with such likeness as is compatible with one’s being actual and the other potential. (Try rephrasing this latter part!!!)

For what possesses knowledge becomes an actual knower by a transition which is either not an alteration of it at all (being in reality a development into its true self or actuality) or at least an alteration in a quite different sense from the usual meaning.
Hence it is wrong to speak of a wise man as being ‘altered’ when he uses his wisdom, just as it would be absurd to speak of a builder as being altered when he is using his skill in building a house.
Aquinas' slightly different methodology - he assumes passion as the genus and then identifies "most proper" form of passion. Is this becuase he is making things easy? - after all - prologue to the whole Summa. I know what I have to check out - if he has commentaries or disputed questions on these things.

What in the case of knowing or understanding leads from potentiality to actuality ought not to be called teaching but something else. That which starting with the power to know learns or acquires knowledge through the agency of one who actually knows and has the power of teaching either a) ought not to be said ‘to be acted upon’ at all or b) we must recognize two senses of alteration, viz. I) the substitution of one quality for another, the first being the contrary of the second, orii) the development of an existent quality from potentiality in the direction of fixity or nature.
In the case of what is to possess sense, the first transition is due to the action of the male parenta nd takes place before birth so that at birth the living thing is, in respect of sensation, at the stage which corresponds to the poossession of knowledge. Actual sensation corresponds to the stage of the exercise of knowledge. But between the two cases compared there is a difference; the objectst that excite the sensory powers to activity, the seen, the heard, etc., are outside. The ground of this difference is that what actual sensation apprehends is individuals, while what knowledge apprehends is universals, and these are in a sense within the osul. That is hwy a man can exercise his knowledge when he wishes, but shis sensation does not depend upon himself - a sensible object must be there. A similar statement must be made about our knowledge of what is sensible - on the same ground, viz. that the sensible objects are individual and external.
A later more appropriate occasion may be found thoroughly to clear up all this. At present it must be enough to recognize the distinctions already drawn; a thing may be said to be potentianl in either rof two senses, a) in the sense in which we might osay of a boy that he may become a general or b) in the sense in which we might say the same of an adult, and there are two corresponding senses of the term ‘a potential sentient’. There is no separate names ofr the two stages of potentiality; we have pointed out that they are different and how they are different. We cannot help using the incorrect terms ‘being acted upon or altered’ of the two transitions involved. As we have said, (iii. 4,5) what has the power of sensation is potentially like what the perceived object is actually; that is, while at the beginning of the process of its being acted upon the two interacting factors are dissimilar, at the end the one acted upon is assimilated to the other and is identical in quality with it.