Page:Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect.pdf/48

36 The past consists of the community of settled acts which, through their objectifications in the present act, establish the conditions to which that act must conform,

Aristotle conceived ‘matter’——as being pure potentiality awaiting the incoming of form in order to become actual. Hence employing Aristotelian notions, we may say that the limitation of pure potentiality, established by ‘objectifications’ of the settled past, expresses that ‘natural potentiality’—or, potentiality in nature—which is ‘matter’ with that basis of initial, realized form presupposed as the first phase in the self-creation of the present occasion. The notion of ‘pure potentiality’ here takes the place of Aristotle’s ‘matter,’ and ‘natural potentiality’ is ‘matter’ with that given imposition of form from which each actual thing arises. All components which are given for experience are to be found in the analysis of natural potentiality. Thus the immediate present has to conform to what the past is for it, and the mere lapse of time is an abstraction from the more concrete relatedness of ‘conformation.’ The ‘substantial’ character of actual things is not primarily concerned with the predication of qualities. It expresses the stubborn fact that whatever is set-