Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/473

 live, rather than the system of immutable and timeless ‘laws’ which we devise for its explanation. Hence Plato’s changeless seem to him too distant and divorced to explain the world. An which is not immanent and does not assert itself in the world of phenomena, but remains an inert and secluded, is lifeless and worthless. Hence the must be in the world and pervade it; or, in his technical phrase, must display itself in actuality. Not that Aristotle denies the validity of the considerations which led Plato to frame his conception of ; he denies only its adequacy. The highest conception must be and not, the actual functioning of a substance whose real nature is only so revealed.

This is the ultimate reason why Aristotle denies that is the Good, and contends that  must be. A merely statical treatment of the truly valuable will not suffice: the Good is not merely, it is in exercise, and a  is only valuable as the basis and potentiality of an.

II.

It follows from this rehabilitation of the Process-view of the world that Aristotle has (a) to establish the superiority of his conception of over the Platonic conception of, (b) that he has to distinguish it from the conception of  or , which had succumbed to the Platonic criticism.

The first point is of course easy enough to establish. It suffices to point out that a substance apart from its activity is an abstraction (= ‘without causality no substantiality’); or, in Aristotle’s words, that the actuality is naturally prior to the potentiality, that to be is to be active.

The second point is more difficult, and Aristotle’s proof thereof is apt to appear paradoxical to us because of our inveterate habit of regarding a ‘function’ as a sort of ‘process’, or even—when we try to be particularly ‘scientific’—as ultimately reducible to a sort of ‘motion’. In other words, we ordinarily subsume Aristotle’s under the conception of what he would have called. But this is the precise opposite of the device whereby Aristotle turned the flank of the Platonic criticism and established his own conception of. Instead of classifying under, he simply makes