On the Vital Principle/Book 3/Prelude to Chapter 7
Commentators are generally agreed in regarding this chapter as a series of ill-connected repetitions of former statements and doctrines; but, although repetitions, they will be found to illustrate or tend to the completion of some preceding opinions. It maintains, in fact, the same dogmata, adopts the same illustrations, and assumes a faculty, the representative of a sensorium, which physiology could not then supply; and thus, although the wording may differ, the purport is the same. The term ἐνέργεια (which was before alluded to) is employed, in a more especial manner in this chapter, and as neither its meaning is obvious nor its equivalent easily selected, it may be well to offer a few words in explanation of it. Although it is opposed, like the ἐντελέχεια, to δύναμις, still the two terms are not synonymous; for the former (the ἐνέργεια) seems to relate to action in some form, and the latter to completion or development of something out of an imperfect or nascent condition. Action must be implied, it is true, in completion or development, and, therefore, the ἐνέργεια may be contained in the ἐντελέχεια, although this may not hold good reciprocally. But the first paragraph may be cited as an example of what apparently needs elucidation—"knowledge, is, it is said, when active, (latinè, in actu,) (ἡ κατ' ἐνέργειαν ἐπιστήμη), identical with," &c.—"la science en acte est identique," &c.—"scientia autem, ea quæ est actu, est idem quod res" and knowledge or science here, by metonymy, may, probably, mean the faculty by which knowledge is acquired or exercised; but what means this peculiar state which identifies the knowledge with the reason? All function presupposes activity and inertia; but the last as much implies identification as the first, so that the distinction between activity and completeness, although present, probably, to Aristotle, is not obvious to a modern student. The definition[1] of the term, although dwelt upon at length, fails, it may be from the difficulty inseparable from abstract speculations, to shew either what is strictly implied by it, or how it differs from the ἐντελέχεια; it is evident that motion, in some modified sense, in the process of completion, is to be understood; but beyond this, vague as it may be, explanation cannot be carried. Potentiality is related to it as to the ἐντελέχεια, but the relation is too dependent upon verbal distinctions, which cannot be transferred, to admit of being made evident even to the student of the original; and thus it may be asked, what is meant by knowledge is, "when active" identical &c. or the same words where they recur?
- ↑ Metaphysica, VIII. 6. I.