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He uses "reality" in such a way as to make the notion of a "mode \[or modus\] of reality" an intelligible notion. Moreover, he seems to assume that there are two, and, in the nature of the case, only two, modes (or modi) of reality: "the modus of actuality" and "the minimal mode, and the only \[_sic_\] alternative to actual existence," namely, "real, ontological potentiality" (226). Therefore, if an idea is coherent and not sheer nonsense, it is the idea of something that is either actual or potential (= possible). Thus the idea of God, assuming that it is neither incoherent nor nonsensical, has to refer to something either actual or potential. Since God cannot be coherently conceived to be an unactualized potentiality, the idea of God can refer only to an actuality. Two passages confirm this use of terms: In one of them Hartshorne argues that if we find the meaning of an idea to be coherent, "we shall therewith have found what, if anything, can be meant by its potentiality; or, if nothing can be meant by this, then we shall have found as its required referent an \[_+sic_+\] actuality" (244). In the other passage, he concludes, "on the whole we must probably choose between the incoherence of all definitions of perfect being, and the actuality \[_sic_\] of the referent of some one of them" (245).

Here, however, he uses "actuality" sufficiently broadly to include both actualized potentialities (or possibilities) _+and_+ necessity. Thus he can say: "necessity means this double truth: the ultimate identity in the world process is actually \[_+sic_+\] there (for it is an aspect of the process), and further, it is meaningless to think of it as not there, as not actual \[_+sic_+\], for 'there' or 'actual' only means 'in the identical process.' How can the nonbeing of the factor which makes alternatives possible be one of the alternatives? Potentiality, whether of existence or of nonexistence, is the protean character of the ultimate cosmos, and therefore this character has no potentiality of existing or of not existing, but simply exists, without benefit of potentiality, that is, necessarily \-\- which only means, without possibility of nonexistence" (240 f.).