ABSTRACT
Activity implies the change of something into something different. Activity implies a happening and a sequence in time. Activity is caused change, but it also must be more. For one thing, altered by another, is not usually thought active, but, on the contrary, passive. Activity seems rather to be self-caused change. A transition that begins with, and comes out of, the thing itself is the process where people feel that it is active. The issue must, of course, be attributed to the thing as its adjective; it must be regarded, not only as belonging to the thing, but as beginning in it and coming out of it. If a thing carries out its own nature people call the thing active. Passivity seems to imply activity. It is the alteration of the thing, in which, of course, the thing survives, and acquires a fresh adjective. Activity, under any of the phrases used to carry that idea, is a mass of inconsistency.
