Potentiality

“ But what we think of as Matter, what we assert to be the potentiality of all things, cannot be said to be actually any one being among beings: if it were of itself any definite being, it could not be potentially all. ”

“ Now the receptive potentiality in the intellectual soul is other than the receptive potentiality of first matter, as appears from the diversity of the things received by each. For primary matter receives individual forms; whereas the intelligence receives absolute forms. Hence the existence of such a potentiality in the intellectual soul does not prove that the soul is composed of matter and form. ”

“ The nature which is the potential subject, perfected by the operative power, is a substance, while the operative power which perfects the substance by actualizing this potentiality is an accident. Of course there is not exactly the same correlation between substance and operative power as between the latter and action. ”

“ The Cosmological Form.—The actual is ever antecedent to the potential not only in conception (for I can speak of potentiality only in reference to some activity) but also in time, for the acting becomes actual only through an acting; the uneducated becomes educated through the educated, and this leads to the claim of a first mover which shall be pure activity. Or, again, it is only possible that there should be motion, becoming, or a chain of causes, except as a principle of motion, a mover exists. ”

“ In the process of development nature goes from potentiality to higher and higher actuality; what is in its being as tendency becomes real. We may not suppose the movement that of spontaneous energy toward accidental results, but rather the progressive realization of what is in the entire rational scheme of the universe. ”

“ In all finite beings we find actuality and potentiality, perfection and imperfection. Primary matter, which is the basis of material substance, is a pure potentiality. Moreover, change necessarily supposes a potential element, for it is a transition from a state .of potentiality to a state of actuality ”

“ All active energy tends to produce certain results. Then the question is what those results are to be. Are they to be favourable or detrimental, superior or inferior, for you or against you? This you can determine by thinking according to design—by thinking for a definite purpose—by placing in action energies that will act for your advantage—by training all the powers of your mind to work for your purpose, to build you up and promote your advancement—by thinking for results—for the results that you are determined to secure.
Every thought you think is a power. ”

“ It follows that Thought and Discourse, in furnishing us with Knowledge, must themselves be active, and must in some way or other reproduce the activity of Nature. Thought, in short, is an Activity which reproduces the activity of things, the activity in which the phenomena of Nature arise.
But how do we arrive at any apprehension of Natural Action? What informs us that Nature is a potency ever operative? What suggests to us [61] the conception of potency at all? We reply that we arrive at the idea of potent action because we are ourselves active beings. ”

“ Will is a relation between the mind and its 'ideas.' In closing in, therefore, after all these preliminaries, upon the more intimate nature of the volitional process, we find ourselves driven more and more exclusively to consider the conditions which make ideas prevail in the mind. With the prevalence, once there as a fact, of the motive idea, the psychology of volition properly stops. The movements which ensue are exclusively physiological phenomena, following according to physiological laws upon the neural events to which the idea corresponds. ”

“ If this view, which seems to me to account for all the peculiarities of instinctive action, is correct, instinct is not a distinct faculty, capacity, property, or quality, of being, which may be compared with or substituted for reason, but has relation only to the mode in which the knowledge by which we determine some of our actions was originally obtained. Whether the innate knowledge of modes and plans is by transmission, or otherwise, does not affect the theory. It is sufficient that they are thus ready formed in the being without effort of its own. ”

“ We must, therefore, content ourselves with what we know, and must include among the effects of causes, the capacities given to objects of being causes of other effects. This capacity is not a real thing existing in the objects; it is but a name for our conviction that they will act in a particular manner when certain new circumstances arise. ”

“ An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in action, which is necessarily causal, or causative." This feeling of energy or force, inherent in an act of will, is knowledge a priori; assurance, prior to experience, that we have the power of causing effects. ”

“ In this conception the identity of a supposed agent or force is evidently sustained in thought. Struck by the definite proportionality found to obtain between the changes occurring simultaneously in the substratum from which the force is thought to have been transferred, and the substratum to which it is thought to have been transferred, the mind is induced by means of a fictitious entity substantially to connect the changes as such, losing sight of the true substances, of which the changes are in reality mere affections. ”

“ The mind, self-possessed and sure of itself or free, is so only through the objective shape which its main development runs parallel with. An intelligent Will, or a practical reason, was the last word of the psychological development. But a reason which is practical, or a volition which is intelligent, is realised by action which takes regular shapes, and by practice which transforms the world. The theory of Objective Mind delineates the new form which nature assumes under the sway of intelligence and will. ”

“ I know very well that we are accustomed to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of power, force, energy, and causation. But if we rest in the conception of these as acting of themselves, and without being under the control of an originating mind or a determining will, we may think that we have arrived at ultimate causes, but we have not. We have arrived at subsidiary causes—the instruments, so to speak, in the control of an intellect which has ordained and uses them. ”

“ Similarly, both in First Principles and in the Principles of Psychology, he assigns to us, in addition to our definite consciousness of our subjective affections, an indefinite consciousness of something out of consciousness, of something which resists, of objective existence. Thus it turns out that the objective agency, the noumenal power, the absolute force, declared unknown and unknowable, is known after all to exist, persist, resist and cause our subjective affections or phenomena, yet not to think or to will. ”

“ All our development consists in the increasing consciousness of this connection, which enables us to apply the higher power to whatever purpose we may have in hand, not merely in the hope that it may respond, but with the certain knowledge that by the law of its own nature it [203] is bound to do so, and likewise with the knowledge that by the same law it is bound also to guide us to the selection of right objects and right methods. ”

“ Amidst our contemplation of the various simple and compound actions, of which the human body is capable, and in which it is perpetually engaged, we are unavoidably led to ask—whence is the peculiar power or capacity, so admirably diffused throughout its numerous parts, by which those actions are performed? ”

“ Is it a rational conclusion that the intelligent power which put these forces in operation—an hypothesis with which we must begin to reason, or leave the origin of both matter and forces to blind chance—did not guide their operation at all to the intentional production of the results which we see? ”

“ Cognition of kind by sensation arises with a certain degree of experience; cognition of form arises with a higher degree of experience; cognition of force arises with a still higher degree of experience; but judgments of kind, judgments of form, and judgments of force are accumulated contemporaneously. So concepts of causation succeed concepts of force; but the judgments of causation are contemporaneous with the judgments of force, form, and kind, and there can be no judgments of causation without judgments of force, form, and kind. ”

“ It is obvious that the advance of our knowledge must consist of both operations; for objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. ”

“ We read in the Ethics, that a properly cultivated mind knows what degree of precision is to be expected in each science. The greatest possible precision is always to be sought; but what is possible depends partly on the nature of the study and partly upon the state of scientific preparation.
(9) To treat an agent or condition remote in time as an unconditional cause: for every moment of time gives an opportunity for new combinations of forces and, therefore, for modifications of the effect. ”

“ Perhaps by still seeking we may find other sorts of inward belonging, even between the molecules and those 'secondary qualities,' etc., which they produce upon our minds.
It cannot be too often repeated that the triumphant application of any one of our ideal systems of rational relations to the real world justifies our hope that other systems may be found also applicable. Metaphysics should take heart from the example of physics, simply confessing that hers is the longer task. Nature may be remodelled, nay, certainly will be remodelled, far beyond the point at present reached. ”

“ To what extent is ability a factor in life? You find people of only ordinary ability succeeding and brilliant people failing. Why is this?
None of the tests so far used measures ideals or perseverance and persistence. These are important factors in life, and there is no very adequate measure for any of them. The students might plan some experiments to test physical and mental persistence and endurance. The tapping experiment, for example, might be continued for an hour and the records kept for each minute. ”

“ Is there—along with mechanical causality and rigorous determinism—room for any other mode of causality, proper to psychology, to linguistics, to history, in short to the positive sciences of the mind, as is maintained by Wundt and others? The secret remains for the future.
The natural tendency of the mind (which is but one aspect of the instinct of conservation) to seek and investigate in face of the unknown and unexpected, its clear or confused need of explanation for better or worse, at the outset concluded for an acting entity. ”

“ Therefore what we call a substance or essence from the static point of view we call a nature when we consider it from the dynamic standpoint, or as an agent.282 No doubt the forces, faculties and powers, the active and passive accidental principles, whereby such an agent exerts and undergoes action, are the proximate principles of all this action and change, but the remote and fundamental principle of the latter is the essence or substance of the agent itself, in other words its nature. ”

“ Before applying the doctrine of chances to any scientific purpose, the foundation must be laid for an evaluation of the chances, by possessing ourselves of the utmost attainable amount of positive knowledge. ”

“ Reid, in order more effectually to show the unanimity which exists on the subject among all competent thinkers.
“When we turn our attention to external objects, and begin to exercise our rational faculties about them, we find that there are some motions and changes in them which we have power to produce, and that there are many which must have some other cause. Either the objects must have life and active power, as we have, or they must be moved or changed by something that has life and active power, as external objects are moved by us. ”

“ We want a word to express the adaptation of means to an end, whether involving consciousness or not; the word purpose will do very well, and the adjective purposive has already been used in this sense. But if the use is admitted, we must distinguish two kinds of purpose. There is the unconscious purpose which is attained by natural selection, in which no consciousness need be concerned; and there is the conscious purpose of an intelligence which designs a thing that it may serve to do something which he desires to be done. ”

“ The uniqueness of such a stimulus lies in the fact that a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a present fact; the future is transferred into the present so as to become effective in the guidance of behavior.
This control by a future that is made present is what constitutes consciousness. A living body may respond to an actual cut by a knife on purely mechanical or reflex principles; but to respond to a cut by anticipation, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible or future injury, is manifestly an exhibition of intelligence. ”

“ But, granting the reality of the phenomena, they themselves demand solution, solely from the point of view of physics and physiology, and quite aside from the nature of the intelligence with which they are at times associated. ”

“ The three faculties which, as I have said, distinguish each of the three human modifications are: sense perception for the body, sentiment for the soul, and assent for the spirit. These three faculties develop instinct, understanding, and intelligence, which produce by a common reaction, common sense, reason, and sagacity.
Instinct, placed at the lowest degree of the ontological hierarchy, is absolutely passive; intelligence, raised to the summit, is entirely active, and understanding placed in the centre, is neuter. ”