Note 4, p. 85. Before proceeding further let us, &c.]
This and the following passages are but repetitions of
what had been said, and further attempts at elucidation;
they all too depend for a meaning upon the two great
leading terms. For motion is in a two-fold state—when
generated by impulse from without it is passive, when
self-generated it is active; and that may be regarded
as potential, this as real. Thus, if a body be at rest,
before being impelled, the agent, by which it is im-
pelled, is unlike and active; but, when so moved, it is,
by the very act of motion, made active, and like to the
agent.
Note 5, p. 85. But we must draw a distinction, &c.] These passages embody, in examples, the two terms so often alluded to, and exhibit the opposite conditions of human beings—every man is learned, potentially, because man is naturally so constituted as to be able to become learned, or, being learned, is subject to an eclipse of his learning by sleep, or disease, or inattention; and every man, endowed with the faculties of his nature, may acquire some one branch of learning, and, when there is no impediment to his doing so, by the exercise of that knowledge, become learned in reality.
The individual who is learned in the first sense cannot, without a succession of changes, (while passing, that is, from ignorance to knowledge), become, at will, learned, in reality; and he can, therefore, be accounted learned, only in potentiality.
