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    "slug": "ennead-2",
    "name": "Ennead II — The Physical Cosmos"
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  "chapter": {
    "num": 6,
    "slug": "6-quality-and-form-idea",
    "title": "II.6 — On Quality and Form-Idea",
    "of": 9,
    "words": 1857,
    "text": "## SIXTH TRACTATE\n\n\n#### SIXTH TRACTATE.\n\nQUALITY AND FORM-IDEA.\n\n\n## Section 1\n\n\n##### Section 1\n\n1. Are not Being and Reality (to on and he ousia) distinct;\nmust we not envisage Being as the substance stripped of all else,\nwhile Reality is this same thing, Being, accompanied by the others-\nMovement, Rest, Identity, Difference- so that these are the specific\nconstituents of Reality?\n\nThe universal fabric, then, is Reality in which Being, Movement,\nand so on are separate constituents.\n\nNow Movement has Being as an accident and therefore should have\nReality as an accident; or is it something serving to the completion\nof Reality?\n\nNo: Movement is a Reality; everything in the Supreme is\na Reality.\n\nWhy, then, does not Reality reside, equally, in this sphere?\n\nIn the Supreme there is Reality because all things are one; ours\nis the sphere of images whose separation produces grades of\ndifference. Thus in the spermatic unity all the human members are\npresent undistinguishably; there is no separation of head and hand:\ntheir distinct existence begins in the life here, whose content is\nimage, not Authentic Existence.\n\nAnd are the distinct Qualities in the Authentic Realm to be\nexplained in the same way? Are they differing Realities\ncentred in one\nReality or gathered round Being- differences which constitute\nRealities distinct from each other within the common fact of Reality?\n\nThis is sound enough; but it does not apply to all the qualities\nof this sphere, some of which, no doubt, are differentiations of\nReality- such as the quality of two-footedness or\nfour-footedness- but\nothers are not such differentiations of Reality and, because they\nare not so, must be called qualities and nothing more.\n\nOn the other hand, one and the same thing may be sometimes a\ndifferentiation of Reality and sometimes not- a differentiation when\nit is a constitutive element, and no differentiation in some other\nthing, where it is not a constitutive element but an accidental. The\ndistinction may be seen in the [constitutive] whiteness of a swan or\nof ceruse and the whiteness which in a man is an accidental.\n\nWhere whiteness belongs to the very Reason-Form of the\nthing it is\na constitutive element and not a quality; where it is a superficial\nappearance it is a quality.\n\nIn other words, qualification may be distinguished. We may think\nof a qualification that is of the very substance of the thing,\nsomething exclusively belonging to it. And there is a qualifying\nthat is nothing more, [not constituting but simply] giving some\nparticular character to the real thing; in this second case the\nqualification does not produce any alteration towards Reality or\naway from it; the Reality has existed fully constituted before the\nincoming of the qualification which- whether in soul or body- merely\nintroduces some state from outside, and by this addition elaborates\nthe Reality into the particular thing.\n\nBut what if [the superficial appearance such as] the visible\nwhiteness in ceruse is constitutive? In the swan the whiteness is not\nconstitutive since a swan need not be white: it is constitutive in\nceruse, just as warmth is constitutive of the Reality, fire.\n\nNo doubt we may be told that the Reality in fire is [not warmth\nbut] fieriness and in ceruse an analogous abstraction: yet the fact\nremains that in visible fire warmth or fieriness is constitutive and\nin the ceruse whiteness.\n\nThus the same entities are represented at once as being not\nqualities but constituents of Reality and not constituents but\nqualities.\n\nNow it is absurd to talk as if one identical thing\nchanged its own\nnature according to whether it is present as a constituent or as an\naccidental.\n\nThe truth is that while the Reason-Principles producing these\nentities contain nothing but what is of the nature of Reality, yet\nonly in the Intellectual Realm do the produced things possess real\nexistence: here they are not real; they are qualified.\n\nAnd this is the starting-point of an error we constantly make:\nin our enquiries into things we let realities escape us and fasten\non what is mere quality. Thus fire is not the thing we so name from\nthe observation of certain qualities present; fire is a\nReality [not a\ncombination of material phenomena]; the phenomena observed here and\nleading us to name fire call us away from the authentic thing; a\nquality is erected into the very matter of definition- a procedure,\nhowever, reasonable enough in regard to things of the realm of sense\nwhich are in no case realities but accidents of Reality.\n\nAnd this raises the question how Reality can ever spring\nfrom what\nare not Realities.\n\nIt has been shown that a thing coming into being cannot be\nidentical with its origins: it must here be added that nothing thus\ncoming into being [no \"thing of process\"] can be a Reality.\n\nThen how do we assert the rising in the Supreme of what we have\ncalled Reality from what is not Reality [i.e., from the pure Being\nwhich is above Reality]?\n\nThe Reality there- possessing Authentic Being in the strictest\nsense, with the least admixture- is Reality by existing among the\ndifferentiations of the Authentic Being; or, better, Reality is\naffirmed in the sense that with the existence of the Supreme is\nincluded its Act so that Reality seems to be a perfectionment of the\nAuthentic Being, though in the truth it is a diminution; the\nproduced thing is deficient by the very addition, by being less\nsimplex, by standing one step away from the Authentic.\n\n\n## Section 2\n\n\n##### Section 2\n\n2. But we must enquire into Quality in itself: to know its\nnature is certainly the way to settle our general question.\n\nThe first point is to assure ourselves whether or not one and\nthe same thing may be held to be sometimes a mere qualification and\nsometimes a constituent of Reality- not staying on the point that\nqualification could not be constitutive of a Reality but of a\nqualified Reality only.\n\nNow in a Reality possessing a determined quality, the Reality\nand the fact of existence precede the qualified Reality.\n\nWhat, then, in the case of fire is the Reality which precedes\nthe qualified Reality?\n\nIts mere body, perhaps? If so, body being the Reality, fire is a\nwarmed body; and the total thing is not the Reality; and the fire\nhas warmth as a man might have a snub nose.\n\nRejecting its warmth, its glow, its lightness- all which\ncertainly\ndo seem to be qualities- and its resistance, there is left only its\nextension by three dimensions: in other words, its Matter is its\nReality.\n\nBut that cannot be held: surely the form is much more likely\nthan the Matter to be the Reality.\n\nBut is not the Form of Quality?\n\nNo, the Form is not a Quality: it is a Reason-Principle.\n\nAnd the outcome of this Reason-Principle entering into the\nunderlying Matter, what is that?\n\nCertainly not what is seen and burns, for that is the\nsomething in\nwhich these qualities inhere.\n\nWe might define the burning as an Act springing from the\nReason-Principle: then the warming and lighting and other effects of\nfire will be its Acts and we still have found no foothold for its\nquality.\n\nSuch completions of a Reality cannot be called qualities since\nthey are its Acts emanating from the Reason-Principles and from the\nessential powers. A quality is something persistently\noutside Reality;\nit cannot appear as Reality in one place after having figured in\nanother as quality; its function is to bring in the something more\nafter the Reality is established, such additions as virtue, vice,\nugliness, beauty, health, a certain shape. On this last, however, it\nmay be remarked that triangularity and quadrangularity are not in\nthemselves qualities, but there is quality when a thing is\ntriangular by having been brought to that shape; the quality is not\nthe triangularity but the patterning to it. The case is the same\nwith the arts and avocations.\n\nThus: Quality is a condition superadded to a Reality whose\nexistence does not depend upon it, whether this something more be a\nlater acquirement or an accompaniment from the first; it is\nsomething in whose absence the Reality would still be complete. It\nwill sometimes come and go, sometimes be inextricably attached, so\nthat there are two forms of Quality, the moveable and the fixed.\n\n\n## Section 3\n\n\n##### Section 3\n\n3. The Whiteness, therefore, in a human being is, clearly, to be\nclassed not as a quality but as an activity- the act of a power\nwhich can make white; and similarly what we think of as qualities in\nthe Intellectual Realm should be known as activities; they are\nactivities which to our minds take the appearance of quality from\nthe fact that, differing in character among themselves, each of them\nis a particularity which, so to speak, distinguishes those Realities\nfrom each other.\n\nWhat, then, distinguishes Quality in the Intellectual Realm from\nthat here, if both are Acts?\n\nThe difference is that these [\"Quality-Activities\"] in\nthe Supreme\ndo not indicate the very nature of the Reality [as do the\ncorresponding Activities here] nor do they indicate variations of\nsubstance or of [essential] character; they merely indicate what we\nthink of as Quality but in the Intellectual Realm must still be\nActivity.\n\nIn other words this thing, considered in its aspect as\npossessing the characteristic property of Reality is by that alone\nrecognised as no mere Quality. But when our reason separates what is\ndistinctive in these [\"Quality-Activities\"]- not in the sense of\nabolishing them but rather as taking them to itself and making\nsomething new of them- this new something is Quality: reason has, so\nto speak, appropriated a portion of Reality, that portion manifest\nto it on the surface.\n\nBy this analogy, warmth, as a concomitant of the specific nature\nof fire, may very well be no quality in fire but an Idea-Form\nbelonging to it, one of its activities, while being merely a Quality\nin other things than fire: as it is manifested in any warm object,\nit is not a mode of Reality but merely a trace, a shadow, an image,\nsomething that has gone forth from its own Reality- where it was an\nAct- and in the warm object is a quality.\n\nAll, then, that is accident and not Act; all but what is\nIdea-form\nof the Reality; all that merely confers pattern; all this is\nQuality: qualities are characteristics and modes other than those\nconstituting the substratum of a thing.\n\nBut the Archetypes of all such qualities, the foundation in\nwhich they exist primarily, these are Activities of the Intellectual\nBeings.\n\nAnd; one and the same thing cannot be both Quality and\nnon-quality: the thing void of Real-Existence is Quality; but the\nthing accompanying Reality is either Form or Activity: there is no\nlonger self-identity when, from having its being in itself, anything\ncomes to be in something else with a fall from its standing as Form\nand Activity.\n\nFinally, anything which is never Form but always accidental to\nsomething else is Quality unmixed and nothing more.",
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