Section 2
Part 8 (continued)
Those, however, which arise from causes easily rendered
ineffective are called affections, not qualities. Suppose that a
man is irritable when vexed: he is not even spoken of as a
bad-tempered man, when in such circumstances he loses his temper
somewhat, but rather is said to be affected. Such conditions are
therefore termed, not qualities, but affections.
The fourth sort of quality is figure and the shape that belongs
to a thing; and besides this, straightness and curvedness and any
other qualities of this type; each of these defines a thing as
being such and such. Because it is triangular or quadrangular a
thing is said to have a specific character, or again because it
is straight or curved; in fact a thing's shape in every case
gives rise to a qualification of it.
Rarity and density, roughness and smoothness, seem to be terms
indicating quality: yet these, it would appear, really belong to
a class different from that of quality. For it is rather a
certain relative position of the parts composing the thing thus
qualified which, it appears, is indicated by each of these terms.
A thing is dense, owing to the fact that its parts are closely
combined with one another; rare, because there are interstices
between the parts; smooth, because its parts lie, so to speak,
evenly; rough, because some parts project beyond others.
There may be other sorts of quality, but those that are most
properly so called have, we may safely say, been enumerated.
These, then, are qualities, and the things that take their name
from them as derivatives, or are in some other way dependent on
them, are said to be qualified in some specific way. In most,
indeed in almost all cases, the name of that which is qualified
is derived from that of the quality. Thus the terms 'whiteness',
'grammar', 'justice', give us the adjectives 'white',
'grammatical', 'just', and so on.
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