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. Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not
in the way which we express by 'potentially'; we say that potentially,
for instance, a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the
half-line is in the whole, because it might be separated out, and we
call even the man who is not studying a man of science, if he is
capable of studying; the thing that stands in contrast to each of
these exists actually. Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases
by induction, and we must not seek a definition of everything but be
content to grasp the analogy, that it is as that which is building
is to that which is capable of building, and the waking to the
sleeping, and that which is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but
has sight, and that which has been shaped out of the matter to the
matter, and that which has been wrought up to the unwrought. Let
actuality be defined by one member of this antithesis, and the
potential by the other. But all things are not said in the same
sense to exist actually, but only by analogy-as A is in B or to B, C
is in D or to D; for some are as movement to potency, and the others
as substance to some sort of matter.
But also the infinite and the void and all similar things are said
to exist potentially and actually in a different sense from that which
applies to many other things, e.g. to that which sees or walks or is
seen. For of the latter class these predicates can at some time be
also truly asserted without qualification; for the seen is so called
sometimes because it is being seen, sometimes because it is capable of
being seen
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