All arts are potentialities

Some originative sources are present in:

• soulless things
• things with a soul
• the rational part of the soul itself

Some potencies will be:

• non-rational or
• rational

This is why all arts are potentialities. They are originative sources of change:

• in another thing or
• in the artist considered as other.

Rational Formula Leads to 2 Opposite Effects

The arts which have a rational formula are capable of contrary effects.

This is different from non-rational power producing only one effect.

For example: the hot is capable only of heating. But the medical art can produce both disease and health.

This is because:

• science is a rational formula
• the same rational formula explains a thing and its privation, but not in the same way.

In a sense it applies to both.

But in a sense, it applies to the positive fact.

Therefore, such sciences must deal with contraries, but:

• with one in virtue of their own nature
• with the other not in virtue of their nature.

This is because the rational formula applies:

• to one object through hat object’s nature, and
• to the other object accidentally

This is because that object exhibits the contrary by denial and removal.

This is because the contrary is the primary privation.

This is the removal of the positive term.

Contraries do not occur in the same thing. But science is a potentiality which depends on the possession of a rational formula.

The soul has an originative source of movement.

• The wholesome produces only health
• The calorific produces only heat
• The frigorific produces only cold

The scientific man produces both the contrary effects.

The rational formula is applies to both differently.

It is in a soul which has an originative source of movement.

• In this way, the soul will start both processes from the same originative source, having linked them up with the same thing.

And so the things whose rational potentiality acts contrariwise to the things whose potentiality is non-rational.

• This is because the products of the rational things are included under the rational formula.
• This rational formula is the one originative source.

Doing a thing well exposes the potentiality inherent in doing a thing.

But doing a thing well is not always implied in the potentiality of the thing.

This is because:

• a person who does a thing well must also do it
• but a person who does it merely does not do it well*