8. The above digression gives us the opportunity of investigating
why there should be a difference between these relations, and those
of which we spoke above. However, we should be glad to have the
Aristotelians first state what community of existence obtains in this
correlation. It would be impossible to claim that this community was
anything corporeal. If then it be corporeal, it must exist either
within the very subjects, or without them. If such a habituation be
identical among all, it is a synonym. If it be a habituation which
differs according to the subjects in which it exists, it is a homonym;
for the mere name of "habituation" (in different things) does not
always correspond to the existence of any genuine similarity. Should
we then divide the habituations into two classes, recognizing that
certain objects have an inert and inactive habituation, implying
simultaneity of existence, and that other objects have a habituation
always implying "potentiality" and "actualization," so that before
"actualizing" the "potentiality" be already ready to exert itself, and
to pass from "potentiality" to "actualization" in the approximation
of relative conditions? Must we assert that in general certain things
actualize, while others limit themselves to existing? Must we also
assert that that which limits itself to existence only gives its
correlative a name, while that which actualizes gives it existence? Of
this latter kind of things are the father and son, the "active" and
"passive," for such things exert a kind of life and action. Must we
then divide habituation in several kinds, not as possessing something
similar and common in the differences, but as having a nature different
in each member of the division, and thus constituting a "homonym"
(or, mere verbal label)? In this case, we would apply to the active
habituation the names of "doing" and "suffering," because both imply an
identical action. Further, we will have to posit another "habituation"
which, without itself actualizing, implies something which acts in
two relative terms. For example, there is equality; which equates
two objects; for it is equality which renders things equal, just as
identity makes them identical; just as the names "great" and "small"
are derived one from the presence of greatness, and the other from
that of smallness. But if we should consider greatness and smallness
in the individuals which participate therein, it must be acknowledged
that such individual is greater by the act of greatness which manifests
in him, and that another is smaller because of the inherent act of
littleness.