Potential

Potential is opposed to actual. This antithesis is a fundamental doctrine of the Peripatetic philosophy. "Aristotle saith that divided they (i.e. bodies) be in infinitum potentially, but actually not" (Holland's Plutarch, p. 667). "Anaximander's infinite was nothing else but an infinite chaos of matter, in which were either actually or potentially contained all manner of qualities" (see Cudworth, Intellectual System, 1, 128).

⇒Definition of potent