Kitap 9
6
Again, all these potentialities are so called either because they merely act or are acted upon in a particular way, or because they do so well . Hence in their formulae also the formulae of potentiality in the senses previously described are present in some degree.
6
Clearly, then, in one sense the potentiality for acting and being acted upon is one (for a thing is capable both because it itself possesses the power of being acted upon, and also because something else has the power of being acted upon by it);
7
and in another sense it is not; for it is partly in the patient (for it is because it contains a certain principle, and because even the matter is a kind of principle, that the patient is acted upon; i.e., one thing is acted upon by another: oily stuff is inflammable, and stuff which yields in a certain way is breakable, and similarly in other cases)—
8
and partly in the agent; e.g. heat and the art of building: the former in that which produces heat, and the latter in that which builds. Hence in so far as it is a natural unity, nothing is acted upon by itself; because it is one, and not a separate thing.
8
Incapacity and the incapable is the privation contrary to capacity in this sense; so that every capacity has a contrary incapacity for producing the same result in respect of the same subject.
9
Privation has several sensesCf. Aristot. Met. 5.22.—it is applied (1.) to anything which does not possess a certain attribute; (2.) to that which would naturally possess it, but does not; either (a) in general, or (b) when it would naturally possess it; and either (1) in a particular way, e.g. entirely, or (2) in any way at all. And in some cases if things which would naturally possess some attribute lack it as the result of constraint, we say that they are deprived.
