Книга только для ознакомления
. I mean, for instance, if a
thing is capable of sitting and it is open to it to sit, there will be
nothing impossible in its actually sitting; and similarly if it is
capable of being moved or moving, or of standing or making to stand,
or of being or coming to be, or of not being or not coming to be.
The word 'actuality', which we connect with 'complete reality',
has, in the main, been extended from movements to other things; for
actuality in the strict sense is thought to be identical with
movement. And so people do not assign movement to non-existent things,
though they do assign some other predicates. E.g. they say that
non-existent things are objects of thought and desire, but not that
they are moved; and this because, while ex hypothesi they do not
actually exist, they would have to exist actually if they were
moved. For of non-existent things some exist potentially; but they
do not exist, because they do not exist in complete reality.
4
If what we have described is identical with the capable or
convertible with it, evidently it cannot be true to say 'this is
capable of being but will not be', which would imply that the things
incapable of being would on this showing vanish. Suppose, for
instance, that a man-one who did not take account of that which is
incapable of being-were to say that the diagonal of the square is
capable of being measured but will not be measured, because a thing
may well be capable of being or coming to be, and yet not be or be
about to be
|
