The aim of this article is to rescue from an unmerited obscurity the Aristotelian ideal of Being, to expound its nature, to remove the paradoxes which it seems, superficially, to involve, and, finally, to show that it alone is competent to satisfy the intellectual and emotional demands we must make upon our conception of Being, and so far to redeem philosophy from the opprobrium of terminating in inconceivable mysteries.
In pursuit of this aim I shall trace (1) the historical antecedents of the doctrine, (2) its statement in Aristotle, (3) its consequences, (4) the objections to it, (5) the replies to them, (6) its advantages over the alternative views; and in so doing I shall, I trust, contribute to the removal of several misconceptions which have long been a source of trouble both in science and in philosophy.
The history of thought, like that of politics, has largely been the history of great antitheses which have kept up their secular conflict from age to age. In the course of that history it may often have seemed that the one side of such an antithesis had finally triumphed over the other, but in the next generation it has often appeared that its rival had rallied its forces and restated its position to such effect that the preponderance of opinion has once more swung back to its side. Perhaps the most important metaphysically of these antitheses is that which has at different times been formulated as that between Γένεσις and Οὐσία, Ἐνέργεια and Ἕξις, Becoming and Being, Change and Immutability, Process and Permanence, and it will be necessary to cast a rapid retrospect over its varying fortunes in order to appreciate the full significance of Aristotle’s doctrine.
It will suffice for this purpose to start with the metaphysic of the Eleatics, taking it as the extremest, crudest, most
