It never would have done if left to itself--suffers a

change from the cause; and it therefore itself is

passive in its activity. If the cause is A, and the

occasion B, then each is active or passive, according as

you view the result as the expression of its nature, or

as an adjective imported from outside.

And we are naturally brought here to a case where

both these aspects seem to vanish. For suppose, as

before, that we have A and B, which enter into one

process, and let us call the result ACB. Here A will

suffer a change, and so also will B; and each again may

be said to produce change in the other. But if the

nature of A was, before, Acb, and the nature of B was,

before, Bca, we are brought to a pause. The ideas which

we are applying are now plainly inadequate and likely to

confuse us. To A and B themselves they might even appear

to be ridiculous. How do I suffer a change, each would

answer, if it is nothing else but what I will? We cannot

adopt your points of view, since they seem at best quite

irrelevant.

To pass to another head, the conclusion, which so far

we have reached, seems to exclude the possibility of one

thing by itself being active. Here we must make

a distinction. If this supposed thing had no variety in

its nature, or, again, if its variety did not change in

time within it, then it is impossible that it should be

active. The idea, indeed, is self-contradictory. Nor

could one thing again be said to be active as a whole;

for that part of its nature which, changing, served as

the occasion could not be included. I do not propose to

argue these points, for I do not perceive anything on

the other side beyond confusion or prejudice. And hence

it is certain that activity implies finitude, and

otherwise possesses no meaning. But, on the other hand,

naturally where there are a variety of elements,

changing in time, we may have activity. For part of

these elements may suffer change from, and may produce

it in, others. Indeed, the question whether this is to

go on inside one thing by itself, appears totally

irrelevant, until at least we have some idea of what we

mean by one thing. And our enquiries, so far, have not

tended to establish any meaning. It is as if we enquired

about hermaphroditism, where we do not know what we

understand by a single animal. Indeed, if we returned at

this point to our A and B connected in one single

process, and enquired of them if they both were parts of

one thing, or were each one thing containing a whole

process of change, we should probably get no answer.

They would once more recommend us to improve our own

ideas before we went about applying them.

Our result up to this point appears to be much as

follows. Activity, under any of the phrases used to

carry that idea, is a mass of inconsistency. It is, in

the first place, riddled by the contradictions of the

preceding chapters, and if it cannot be freed from

these, it must be condemned as appearance. And its own

special nature, so far as we have discovered that, seems

certainly no better. The activity of anything seems to

consist in the way in which we choose to look at that

which it is and becomes. For, apart from the