mere idea in our minds which we have merely about the thing. We are sure of this, and our meaning falls between these extremes. But where precisely it falls, and in what exactly it consists, seems at present far from clear. Let us, however, try to go forwards.
Passivity seems to imply activity. It is the alteration of the thing, in which, of course, the thing survives, and acquires a fresh adjective. This adjective was not possessed by the thing before the change. It therefore does not belong to its nature, but is a foreign importation. It proceeds from, and is the adjective of, another thing which is active—at the expense of the first. Thus passivity is not possible without activity; and its meaning is obviously still left unexplained.
It is natural to ask next if activity can exist by itself and apart from passivity. And here we begin to involve ourselves in further obscurity. We have spoken so far as if a thing almost began to be active without any reason; as if it exploded, so to speak, and produced its contents entirely on its own motion, and quite spontaneously. But this we never really meant to say, for this would mean a happening and a change without any cause at all; and this, we agreed long ago, is a self-contradiction and impossible. The thing, therefore, is not active without an occasion. This, call it what you please, is something outside the standing nature of the thing, and is accidental in the sense of happening to that essential disposition. But if the thing cannot act unless the act is occasioned, then the transition, so far, is imported into it by the act of something outside. But this, as we saw, was passivity. Whatever acts then must be passive, so far as its change is occasioned. If we look at the process as the coming out of its nature, the process is its activity. If we regard the same process, on the other hand, as due to the occasion, and, as we say, coming from that, we
