I.—Reality and Potentiality.
The immediate object before the senses undergoes change; the real becomes potential, and that which was potential becomes real. Without the potentiality we could have had no change. At first we are apt to consider the real as the entire existence and to ignore the potential; but the potential will not be treated thus. Whatever a thing can become is as valid as what it is already. The properties of a thing by which it exists for us, are its relations to other beings, and hence are rather its deficiencies than its being per se. Thus the sharpness in the acid was pronounced to be the hunger of the same for alkali; the sharper it was, the louder was its call for alkali. Thus the very concreteness of a thing is rather the process of its potentialities. To illustrate this: we have a circle of possibilities belonging to a thing—only one of them is real at a time; it is, for instance, water, whose potentialities are vapor, liquid, and solid. Its reality is only a part of its total being, as in the case of water it was only one-third of itself at any given temperature. Yet the real is throughout qualified by the potential. In change, the real is being acted upon by the potential under the form of “outside influences.” The pyramid is not air, but the air continually acts upon it, and the pyramid is in a continual process of decomposition; its potentiality is continually exhibiting its nature. We know by seeing a thing undergo change what its potentialities are. In the process of change is manifested the activity of the potentialities which are thus negative to it. If a thing had no negative it would not change. The real is nothing but the surface upon which the potential writes its nature; it is the field of strife between the potentialities. The real persists in existence through the potential which is in continual process with it. Thus we are led to regard the product of the two as the constant. This we call Actuality.
II.—Actuality.
The actual is a process, and is ever the same; its two sides, are the real and the potential, and the real is manifested no more and no less than the potentialities, in the process which constantly goes on. The real is annulled by the potential, and the latter becomes the real, only to be again replaced. If in the circle of possibilities which make up the entire being of a thing, that which is real bears a small proportion to the rest, the real is very unstable, for the potentialities are to that extent actively negative to it. But let the sphere of the real be relatively large, and we have a more stable being—there is less to destroy it and more to sustain it—it is a higher order of being. If the whole circle of its being were real it would coincide with its actuality, it would be self-related, exist for itself, and this would be the existence of the Idea.
III.—The Actual is the Rational.
The highest aim is toward perfection; and this is pursued in the cancelling of the finite, partial or incomplete, by adding to it its other or complement—that which it lacks of the Total or Perfect. Since this complement is the potential, and since this potential is and can be the only agent that acts upon and modifies the real, it follows that all process is pursuant of the highest aim; and since the actual is the process itself, it follows that the actual is the realization of the Best or of the Rational. A somewhat has a low order of existence if the sphere of its reality is small compared to that of its potentiality. But the lower its order the more swift and sure are the potentialities in their work. Hence no matter how bad anything is, the very best thing is being wrought upon it. Seize the moments of the world-history, and state precisely what they lacked of the complete realization of spirit, and one will see clearly that each phase perished by having just that added to it which it most of all needed.
IV.—“The Form of Eternity.”
To think according to Reason is to think things under the form of Eternity, says Spinoza (Res sub quadam specie aeternitatis percipere). The Form of Eternity is what we have found as the true actual. The Phenomenal world is the constant spectacle wherein each and all is placed under the form of Eternity. When this is done, all immediate (or mechanical) being appears in a state of transition; all mediated being appears as a merely relative, i. e. as existing in what lies beyond it; all absolutely mediated (i. e. self-determined) being appears in a state of development. In the first and second stages the individual loses its identity. In the third stage the process is one of unfolding, and hence the continual realizing of a more vivid personal identity. Thus the Form of Eternity is to the conscious being the realization of his Immortality.
A THOUGHT ON SHAKESPEARE.
By Anna C. Brackett.
To say that Shakespeare excels others by virtue of the genius which enables him to throw himself for the time completely into each of the characters he represents, is to say a very common-place thing, and yet it will bear repeating.