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ON QUALITIES

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2005.

The accident quality intrinsically affects the substance in itself, making it to be in one

way or another. It arises from the form of things and is found in both corporeal and incorporeal

beings. It is the most inclusive of accidents, having the widest scope, meaning, and application.

Quality indicates what sort or kind a thing is. It modifies or influences a substance in itself or in

its activities. In language, most adjectives express qualities. It makes the substance which it

affects either better or worse, or makes it function more easily or less easily. Qualities have their opposites and can be listed in opposite pairs, like knowledge and ignorance, virtue and vice, and

health and illness. They are also susceptible to degrees, capable of being increased or diminished

in intensity.

Kinds of Qualities. Qualities are classified into the following four groups, namely: 1

Habits and Dispositions; 2. Capacities; 3. Passive Characteristics; and 4. Outlines (Forms) and

Figures.

1. Habits and Dispositions. Habits are stable qualities by which a subject is either well or

ill-disposed with regard to a certain perfection befitting its nature (entitative habits) or its action

or goal (operative habits). Habits are divided into entitative habits (like the habits of health or

sickness) and operative habits (like virtues or vices). Habit and disposition determine the

substantial subject in regard to its nature, and are said to be good or bad according as they are, or

are not, directed to the perfection of the nature in question. Habit, moreover, differs from

disposition as the stable from the unstable; habit, accordingly, is more lasting, more firmly established. Example of habit: intellectual virtues (science, prudence, art), moral virtues, manual

skills1 ; 2. Capacities and Incapacities. Operative Powers are qualities that are also called

operative faculties or potencies. They are qualities which enable the subject to carry out certain

acts like thinking, willing, walking, etc. They include, for example, the intelligence and will in

man, and the power of locomotion in both man and animal. Affecting the subject as to its

activity are the qualities capacity and incapacity (potentia, impotentia). Capacity disposes the

subject to receive or give resistance to an activity; thus, intellect, imagination, will (others could

be mentioned) are capacities through which the subject receives (exercises) the activities of these

faculties. If the capacity is undermined or weakened, it is called incapacity, which, then, does

not mean the total absence of a power or faculty. Enfeebled vision would in this sense be an

incapacity, but not so total blindness; or (Aristotles example), some men are healthy because of

the capacity to resist unhealthy influences, others unhealthy because of a lack of this capacity,

but not a complete lack, which spells death2 ; 3. Alterable Qualities (also called passive

qualities or characteristics). These qualities affect a physical change in a substance. Alterable

qualities include temperature, color and humidity. The rise in temperature of water from cold to hot, for example, affects the water physically. Affections and affective qualities (passiones,

passibiles qualitates) are qualities which produce, or are produced by, sensible alteration; that is,

1 H. D. GARDEIL, Introduction to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 4 (Metaphysics), B. Herder, St. Louis 1967, p. 175. 2 H. D. GARDEIL, op. cit., pp. 175-176.

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qualities from which alteration begins and in which it terminates. In general, they affect the

senses immediately, and include the sensible qualities of bodies and the bodily temperaments and

passions (feelings and emotions). Within the third species a distinction is made on the same basis

as in the first species, relative permanence and impermanence. If the quality is lasting, it is one of

the affective qualities; if quickly passing, it is an affection example, the blushing

complexion versus the blush of modesty. Among the basic qualities of the third species, in

Aristotelian thought, are hot, cold, dry, wet, and mixings of them3 ; 4. Shape and Figure. These

qualities of corporeal bodies define the limits of quantity, giving it definite dimensions and

contours. With respect to continuous quantity the distinction of form and figure is made, which

proportion and terminate it, since it must be terminated or limited. Form adds to figure the note

of due proportion and refers, in a special sense, to works of art. Thus, we speak of a spherical figure, but of the form (or shape) of a vase.

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Giving the Angelic Doctors account of the ground for the Stagirites classification,

Coffey writes: Scholastic philosophy has generally adopted Aristotles division of qualities into

four great groups: (1) Habitus vel dispositio; (2) Potentia naturalis vel impotentia; (3) Potentia

passivae et passiones; (4) Forma vel figura. St. Thomas offers the following ground for this

classification. Since quality, he says,5 is an accidental determination of the substance itself, i.e. of

the perfection of its concrete existence and activity, and since we may distinguish four aspects of

the substance: its nature itself as perfectible; its intrinsic principles of acting and receiving

action, principles springing from the formative, specific constituent of its nature; its receptivity

of change effected by such action, a receptivity grounded in the determinable or material

principle of its nature; and finally its quantity, if it be a corporeal substance, we can likewise

distinguish between (1) acquired habits or dispositions, such as health, knowledge, virtue, vice,

etc., which immediately determine the perfection of the substance, disposing it well or ill in

relation to its last end; (2) intrinsic natural forces, faculties, powers of action, aptitudes, capacities, such as intellect, will, imagination, instinct, organic vital foces, physical, chemical,

mechanical energies; (3) states resulting in a corporeal being from the action of its milieu upon it:

the passions and emotions of sentient living things, such as sensations of pleasure, pain, anger,

etc.; the sensible qualities of matter, such as colour, taste, smell, temperature, feel or texture,

etc.; and, finally (4) the quality of form or shape which is a mere determination of the quantity of

a corporeal substance.6

Glenn describes the four groupings of quality as follows: (1) Dispositions and Habits. A

habit is a settled and enduring quality, born of repeated acts or of a continued state of being,

which influences a substance in itself or its operations. A habit is firmly fixed and not readily

removable. Before it becomes so fixed, and while it is still relatively easy to remove, it is called a

disposition. Thus a child who has lied a few times to avoid difficulties may be said to have the

disposition to escape trouble in this unworthy way; continued lying will fix the practice as a

habit. Thus a pupil who has, by taste or effort, acquired a liking for serious study, is disposed to

do good work, and continued application will make regular study a habit. A habit, in casual or colloquial use of the term, suggests the doing of something as a regular practice, but it need not

3 H. D. GARDEIL, op. cit., p. 176. 4 Ibid. 5 Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 49, a. 2. 6 P. COFFEY, Ontology, Peter Smith, New York, 1938, p. 290.

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be limited to this meaning. Continued sickness is a habit; enduring health is a habit; fatness or

leanness is a habit. These latter are called habits of being or entitative habits, while the habits of

doing are operative habits. The ability to type on a computer rapidly is an operative habit; so is

the ability to skate, or to play the piano, or to read French; these are things acquired by continued

effort and repetition, and they are not easily lost or removed, even though they be not often

exercised after they have once become a fixed possession. A habit is distinguished as good or

bad, according to the effect it has on action or conduct. Vice is a morally bad habit; virtue is a

morally good habit. Chewing tobacco is a socially bad habit. Cleansing ones teeth twice daily is

a hygienically good habit. But usually the terms good and bad have, as descriptive of habit, a

moral implication. Again, a habit is distinguished as natural or supernatural; a natural habit is

one acquired by the unaided powers of nature; a supernatural habit is one that cannot be achieved by natural powers but is bestowed by God. Thus, knowledge gained by study, is a natural habit;

sanctifying grace is a supernatural habit. The basic meaning of habit (from Latin habitus the

passive past participle of the verb to have) is a thing had, a thing one has got, a thing that

stays. A grasp of this fundamental meaning of the term will clear up all that seems unusual in the

distinction of various habits that we have just made. The cultivation of good (operative) habits

is of immense practical importance for the conduct of life. Good habits render the right thing

prompt and easy in ordinary circumstances, and in moments of great stress of temptation they

furnish the most favorable ground for the operation of actual grace. What is called a mans

character is largely a matter of acquired natural and supernatural habits.

2 Capacities. A capacity or power is the faculty for doing something. All the activity of

a substance comes from its nature (for nature means an essence viewed as the root and source of

operations), but nature is not operative immediately, but only through faculties or powers or

capacities which inhere in it as qualities. Thus the capacity for thinking (the mind or intellect)

and for choosing (the will) and the capacities for sensing (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, imagination, memory, consciousness, instinct) are not the substance of a man, nor the nature of a

man, but powers (which in themselves are accidents, and qualities) which serve the man in his

connatural activities. The noblest of human faculties are, of course, the soul-faculties of mind

and will. When a man uses these well, we say that he is a man of fine qualities. Since capacities

or powers are qualities, they must have their respective opposites; for we have seen that this is a

requirement of quality. The opposite of power is impotence, debility, weakness. Thus the quality

of keen-sightedness has its opposite quality in weak-sightedness.

3. Passive Characteristics. The term passion has many meanings in English, and the

most common one is that of a strong emotion. But its literal meaning is an undergoing or an

enduring. Of course, when one is strongly moved (as by anger or by love) one undergoes, one

suffers, one endures something; yet here one is apt to think of the passion as the active force

which produces the emotion; literally it is not so. When one endures cold, or heat, or when one

undergoes a change of color, as of paleness through fright or a flushing of the face because of

anger or embarrassment, one experiences passion in the strict and literal sense. Now, the actual undergoing of influences (actions) is the special category called the accident of passion, which is

the terminus and the complement of the accident of action. The result in a substance of the

enduring or undergoing of influence (action) is the accident of quality, which we here call,

somewhat lamely and inadequately, a passive characteristic. Thus the actual undergoing of a

sensation of fright is passion, not quality. But the resultant state of the substance affected by

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passion, the paling of the face, the trembling of the hands, is quality, or passive characteristic

which is a type of quality. This type of quality is, unfortunately for minds easily muddled, also

called by the simple term passion if it is a quickly passing quality, a transitory state or condition

of the substance affected. If this quality is an enduring thing, it is called passive quality, or, in the

Latin phrase, qualitas patibilis. Thus the paling of the face, the sinking of the heart, the trembling

of the hands, are qualities called passions, for these things are, of their nature, fleeting and

transitory. But the ordinary state of the complexion, the regular temperature of the body (which

are things produced by normal influences) are not fleeting or transitory, but tend to endure;

therefore, these things are called, not passions, but passive qualities.

4. Outlines and Figures. The outline or figure or form or shape of a thing is the limit of its quantity. Every actual body has quantity, and the quantity has ends, terminations, limits,

points where it breaks off. These limits determine the shape of the body, or its outline or form or

figure. The form or figure is not the substance affected by it, nor the quantity of that substance; a

ball of wax that weighs one pound is not changed in substance or in quantity when the wax is

reshaped. The form or figure of a bodily substance is a quality of the substance; it is a quality of

quantified matter. By an ancient usage, the term form was used only with reference to artificial

things, like houses, or paintings, or wagons, or clocks; and the term figure was used with

reference to natural substances like trees or horses or men. Later usage, however, has made the

terms form and figure practically synonymous and interchangeable, and has added a new

synonym, shape. In passing, the student is warned that the term form (which here means, of

course, accidental form, and of a special type) is a most potent and most frequently recurrent

word in a philosophers vocabulary. In general, a form means any determinateness of being,

essential or non-essential, substantial or accidental. In this sense, all accidents are forms

(accidental forms), and the essence, the nature, the subsistence of a substance are forms; the

substance itself is constituted in its character as an existing thing of definite essence and nature by its substantial form.

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Characteristics of Quality. Coffey presents three characteristics of qualitity, namely: 1.

Qualities have contraries; 2. Quality is the basis or fundamentum of all relations of similarity

and dissimilarity; 3. Qualities admit of varying degrees of intensity: (a) Qualities have

contraries. Health and illness, virtue and vice, science and error, etc., are opposed as contraries.

This, however, is not a property of qualities; it is not verified in powers, or in forms and figures;

and it is verified in accidents which are not qualities, e.g. in actio and passio.

(b) Quality is the basis or fundamentum of all relations of similarity and dissimilarity.

This attribute seems to be in the strict sense a property of all qualities. Substances are similar in

so far as they have the same kind of qualities, dissimilar in so far as they have different kinds.

Similarity of substances is the main index to identity of nature or kind; but it must not be

confounded with the latter. The latter cannot always be inferred even from a high degree of

similarity: some specifically distinct classes of things are very similar to one another. Nor, on the other hand, is full and complete similarity a necessary consequence of identity of nature:

individuals of the same species are often very dissimilar, very unlike one another.

7 P. J. GLENN, Ontology, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1957, pp. 243-248.

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(c) Qualities admit of varying degrees. They can increase or diminish in the same

substance, while numerically (and specifically) distinct substances can have the same kind of

quality in different degrees. This is manifest in regard to habits, passions and sensible

qualities. On the other hand, it is clearly not true of form or figure. Different individuals can

have the same kind of natural power in different degrees. One man may be naturally of keener

intellect and stronger will than another: the weak power was what Aristotle called

(impotentia). But whether the natural powers of the same individual can themselves increase or

decrease in strength or intensity and not merely the habits that affect these powers is not so

clear. Operative powers are certainly perfected (or injured) by the acquisition of good (or bad)

habits. In the view of those who deny a real distinction between natural operative power or

faculty and substance, it is, of course, the substance itself that is so perfected (or injured).

This attribute, therefore, is not found in all qualities; but it is found in qualities alone,

and not in any other category or mode of being.8

The Objectivity of Sensible Qualities

The Object of the Senses. A sense is an organic cognitive power, operating by means of a

sense-organ, which enables the sentient being to directly perceive and know a certain kind of

corporeal object. A sensible is that object which in any way can be appehended by a sense. The

object of an external sense is called an external sensible, which is divided into essential or per se

sensibles and accidental (per accidens) sensibles, according as to whether they are sensible in

themselves or not. For example, Bobs color and size are essential sensibles, while Bob himself,

though being an individual substance of a rational nature, is an accidental sensible.

Proper Sensibles. A proper sensible is that essential sensible which directly refers to only one sense. For example, the color red of a rose is the proper sensible of the external sense of

sight. Epistemologists usually call this kind of sensible a secondary sense quality. Colored

objects are sensed as colored by the sense of sight alone and not by any other sense. Now, that

which is sensed by one sense alone constitutes the proper object of that sense. Color in its

concrete being as a quality of a corporeal thing, that is, color as extended or a colored surface, is

the proper object of sight and no other.

Are proper sensibles truly objective? What is their status as regards their objectivity?

Mechanists, in general, maintain the subjectivity of secondary sense qualities (the proper

sensibles). For them, only the common sensibles (the primary sensibles) could be considered as

trans-subjective. They believe that color, warmth, flavor, etc. are purely subjective modifications

of the sentient subject and that what is truly trans-subjective is movement (a common sensible),

which would produce the illusion of the different qualities. Against this position Llano maintains

that such affirmations are not scientific but philosophical and, in this case, they are unfounded.

Classical mechanics could, by a homogenizing abstraction, take notice only of movement; but it is not methodologically permitted to reduce the real merely to movement, as the further

development of physics has demonstrated by depriving mechanistic reductionism of its

supposedly scientific foundationSt. Thomas, commenting on Aristotle, maintains against

subjectivist positions that movement according to quantity is not the same thing as movement

8 P. COFFEY, op. cit., pp. 305-306.

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according to quality or form. And even if it be granted that things are in continuous movement

according to quantity, and that all things are always invisibly in movement in this way,

nonetheless, according to quality or form not everything is always moving. And thus there can be

definite knowledge of things, because things are known more by their species or form than by

their quantity.9 Things really have qualities which inhere in them as accidents and which we

perceive in an immaterial way, in accordance with the formal object and the range of each sense

faculty, but not arbitrarily, and always with an objective aspect. We perceive the qualities of

things some, not all of them immediately, because they are what primarily and properly

affects our sense organs; by means of these qualities we grasp quantities concomitantly and

immediately, but indirectly.

The denial of the extra-subjective scope of our knowledge of qualities completely

compromises gnoseological realism since intellectual knowledge starts, in the final analysis,

from the grasping of proper sensibles. In sense knowledge there is stability and in it there is no

contradiction. For example, a thing never seems sweet and bitter at the same time; and of itself,

sweetness is always the same thing. What can happen without this being a denial of the reality

of sense knowledge is that, because of the deficiencies of our organic constitution, we do not

perceive something properly at a given moment.

The external senses immediately know their object as something trans-subjective: this is

unquestionably evident. Immediately, and without hesitation, we know that the known is

something real and distinct from our knowledge. External sense knowledge is the intuition of an

object which is physically present, without the mediation of an expressed species. Like all

knowing faculties, the external senses are active; however they are not productive of their objects

but in this respect receptive: they produce their object neither according to its matter nor

according to its form, nor according to its presence (as the different idealisms would have us believe), but rather know their object in its objective reality. They produce only their own proper

cognitive action, which is a praxis by which they attain their proper object. And this complete

trans-subjectivity of sense objects is not only apparent, but real, true.10

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Going beyond the mechanists, the idealists declared the common sensibles (the primary

sensibles) to be likewise subjective. Against these positions we find realism, which maintains

that not only are common sensibles objectively real but also the proper sensibles. Adopting a

moderated perceptionism against the interpretationism of classical and modern mechanism

(which denies the objectivity of the proper sensibles), Sanguineti explains that sensible qualities

not only manifest themselves as objective, but have an operativity independent from their

activity on the sentient: heat dilates bodies, light has concrete effects on material beings, and the

same can be said of sound, the aroma of flowers, etcwe perceive objective qualities in normal

cases and according to certain conditions of observationThe reduction to pure quantity (to the

sensible communes) has not been able to ever cancel some qualitative elements, such as force,

resistance, causal influence, etc., which are invariably encountered in the most mechanical

9 In IV Metaphysicorum, lect. 13, no. 668. 10 Cf. J. GREDT, Unsere Aussenwelt. Eine Untersuchung ber den gegenstndliche Wert der Sinneserkenntnis, Tyrolia, Innsbruck, 1921, pp. 165-184. 11 A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, p. 76-77.

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scientific explanations (these in particular have recourse frequently to certain tangible

qualities).12

Common Sensibles. Common sensibles are essential sense objects which can be sensed by

more than one sense. For example, the size of a particular corporeal being, say a rock, can be

sensed by both the external senses of sight and touch. The common sensibles are also called

primary sense qualities. Though sensed in themselves, common sensibles (e.g., size, movement,

shape) are not sensed immediately but by means of a proper sensible. For example, an apples

figure is seen by means of its color and may be felt by means of its pressure and temperature,

which are the proper sensibles of the external senses of sight and touch (also called the

somesthetic sense). There are five common sensibles, namely, size, shape, number, motion and rest. All these common sensibles, says Aquinas, are reducible to quantity, which is the proximate

subject of the qualities (proper sensibles) that cause alteration in the sense. Therefore, the

common sensibles do not move the senses directly but by reason of a proper sensible. Aquinas

writes: The common sensibles are reducible to quantity. As to size and number, it is clear that

they are species of quantity. Shape is a quality about quantity, since the nature of shape consists

in fixing the bounds of magnitude. Movement and rest are sensed according as the subject is

affected in one or more ways in the magnitude of the subject or of its local distance, as in the

movement of growth or of locomotion, or again, according as it is affected in some sensible

qualities, as in the movement of alteration; and thus to sense movement and rest is, in a way, to

sense one thing and many. Now quantity is the proximate subject of the qualities that cause

alteration (proper sensibles) as surface is of color. Therefore, the common sensibles do not move

the senses first and of their own nature, but by reason of sensible quality; as the surface by

reason of color. Yet, they are not accidental sensibles, for they produce a certain diversity in the

mutation of the sense. For sense is changed differently by a large and by a small surface.13

Brennan explains that every object that falls under the senses is quantified and localized

by the laws of its cosmic being. It has definite spatial and temporal dimensions. It always exists

and operates somewhere and sometime. Now, these very facts immediately surround it with

characteristics that are not entirely explicated in terms of colors, sounds, odors, flavors, and

tangible properties. A rose, for example, is not merely red and fragrant; it also has surface

qualities, extension, shape, solidity, a measurable distance away from the eye, a definite size,

perhaps even a local motion as it sways in the breeze. A song, for instance, is not merely a series

of auditory stimuli. It also has a definite tempo, a meter, a distribution of accents, and a rhythm.

Quite obviously, none of the spatial features of the rose, and none of the temporal characteristics

of the song, are perceived by any one outer sense alone, in the same way that color is seen by the

eye or sound is heard by the ear. Rather, they are aspects of the material object that

simultaneously appeal to several external senses, representing an association of data that require

the combined efforts of many senses if they are to be perceived. Aquinas, therefore, following

the lead of Aristotle, calls them common sensibles.14

What is the phenomenology of our knowledge of the common sensibles, that is, how do

we grasp common sensibles like size, shape or figure, and movement by means of our external

12 J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., pp. 216-217. 13 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 78, a. 3, ad 2. 14 R. E. BRENNAN, Thomistic Psychology, Macmillan, New York, 1963, pp. 122-123.

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and internal senses, as well as by our intelligence? Sanguineti observes that the external senses

perceive the extended character of bodies, which is not a subjective form, but a real property of

material beings. Nonetheless, dimensions are perceived not in an absolute way, but rather from a

certain point of view, depending on the situation of the observer: each person sees extension in a

different way from another, and also differently according to the variations of his position. We

do not for this reason think that the dimensions change, or that they are subjective: it is precisely

the integral experience, particularly thanks to the contribution of the internal senses, such as

common sense, imagination and memory, which allows a more complete perception of things,

surpassing the limitation of the external senses. For example, we see a person far away, but we

do not think the person is small; we see the sun, and since we are lacking a greater experience, it

seems to us that the sun is larger than the stars.

Sensible knowledge is imperfect, gradual, and fragmentary: it is necessary to find some

constant, determined relations between the data of the senses. Therefore, perception develops

itself in a partially constructive way (that is to say, it is not purely passive), where one seeks to

objectivize in agreement with reality. For example, think of the effort that a man blind from birth

must make to construct his image of the world with the few elements of the world he possesses.

In general, the normal adult has a sufficient experience for the most immediate world, while for

the macrophysical and microphysical sphere ordinary experience is clearly insufficient,

occasioning errors that only a greater experience can correct.

Now, if in knowledge there is construction (not a priori, but following the indications of

immediate experience), precisely for this reason there exists the possibility of error. Man

organizes the spatial structures of the surrounding world according to some schemes that are later

corrected, and which can sometimes occasion errors, such as, for example, in not noticing the

small differences between the objects, or not foreseeing possible anomalies in things that we imagine to be normal. Thus we cannot see bodies from all sides, but the imagination supplies

with the help of past experience, even if this does lead to a greater risk of error.15

Sensibles Per Accidens. A sensible per accidens (or accidental sensible), also called an

incidental sensible, is not in itself the object of an external sense, but is apprehended by another

cognitive power or faculty as accompanying that which a particular external sense grasps. For

example, the bodily substance of a red apple is an accidental sensible or accidental sense object

of the sense of sight, because the intellect apprehends it as the subject of the red-colored sphere.

The red apple, then, is a sensible per accidens by reason of its color and size. The senses cannot

grasp the nature or essence of the substance or thing; this is done, instead, in the realm of

intellectual knowledge.

15 J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic and Gnoseology, Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, pp. 214-215.