ness, sourness, and all their affinities, besides warmth, and coldness, and whiteness, and blackness. Now that these are qualities, is evident from their recipients being called from them, "qualia,"[1] as honey from receiving sweetness, is said to be sweet, and the body white, from receiving whiteness; in like manner in other things. They are called passive qualities,[2] not from the recipients of the qualities suffering any thing, for neither is honey said to be sweet from suffering any thing, nor any thing else of such a kind. In like manner to these are heat and cold called passive qualities, not from the recipients themselves suffering any thing, but because each of the above-mentioned qualities produces passion in the senses, they are denominated passive qualities; for as sweetness, produces a certain passion in the taste, and warmth, in the touch, so also do the rest. 1. Exception in the case of colours. Whiteness, and blackness, and other colours are, on the contrary, not called passive qualities in the same manner with the above-mentioned, but from themselves being produced from passion; for that many changes of colours spring from passion is evident, since when a man blushes he becomes red, and when frightened, pale, and so every thing of this sort. Whence also if a man naturally suffers a passion of this nature, he will probably have a similar colour, since the disposition which is now produced about the body when he blushes, may also be produced in the natural constitution, so as that a similar colour should naturally arise. Whatever such symptoms then originate from certain passions diffi-
- ↑ Simplicius doubts whether the same thing is signified by quale, and quality: probably the latter signifies the peculiarity itself, but quale that which participates in the peculiarity, as in the examples given above. As to the term "quality," Plato in his Theætetus insinuates that he was the author of it, and indeed some ancient philosophers, as Antisthenes, subverted certain qualities, and allowed only the subsistience of qualia, which they deemed incorporeal. The Stoics, on the contrary, thought the qualities of incorporeal natures incorporeal, and of bodies, corporeal. Simplicius defines qualities—"powers, active, yet not so, primarily, nor alone."
- ↑ It may perhaps seem strange that Aristotle distinguishes passions and passive qualities by the same characteristics as he has before used about habit and disposition; but it may be replied, that here he considers the passions and passive qualities which by nature are easily or hardly removed. Heat, so far as it disposes a subject, is a disposition; so far as that disposition is permanent, is a habit; if it be superficially effected by an agent, it is called a passion, and so far as the passion is produced permanently and intrinsically, it is called passive quality. Taylor.
