§2.6.1. Are Being and Substance different, and is Being isolated2 from the other [greatest genera] while Substance is Being together with the others – Motion, Stability, Identity, and Difference – and are these [five genera] elements of Substance?3 The whole, then, is Substance, and one of those individual components is Being, another Motion, and another5 something else. Motion, then, is accidentally being, but is it also Substance accidentally, or is it rather an essential component of Substance?
In fact, it is neither; rather, both Motion and all the other [highest genera] in the intelligible world are Substance.4
Why, then, does this not hold of the sensible world, too?
In fact, this holds in the intelligible world because there all things are one,5 but in the sensible world the images have been separated from one another and the one is distinct from the other. It is just like with the10 seed, where everything is together6 and each is everything and there is not a hand nor a head existing separately, but then [after conception, the parts] are separated from one another because they are images and no longer genuine.
Shall we say, then, that qualities in the intelligible world, given that they apply to Substance or Being, are differentiae of Substance, and that they are differentiae that make Substances different from one15 another and thus make them fully Substances? It is not absurd to say this of the intelligible world, but it would be odd to say this of the qualities in the sensible world, where some qualities are said to be differentiae of substances, for example, biped and quadruped, while others are said not to be differentiae of substances but simply qualities.7 And yet the identical item can be both a differentia that completes the essence in one thing and not a differentia in another thing, not completing the essence of its substance but belonging to it20 accidentally. For example, in a swan or ceruse8 whiteness completes the essence, but in you it exists accidentally.
In fact, in the first case the whiteness is in the expressed principle completing the essence and is not a quality, while in the second case the whiteness belonging to the surface is a qualification. And, in fact, we should distinguish between two kinds of qualification such that the one is substantial and a kind of property of substance, and the other is a mere25 qualification by which a substance becomes a qualified substance; in this latter case, the qualification does not transform it into the substance that it is nor from the substance it was; rather, the substance is already there and essentially complete and the quality creates a certain condition from the outside, that is, a supplement that is posterior to the substantiality of the thing, regardless of whether this occurs in connection with the soul or the body.9
But in the case of ceruse is the visible white also completing its30 essence? For in the case of the swan the visible white is not essence-completing, since a swan could become not-white.10 But in the case of ceruse it is essence-completing, as is heat in the case of fire. But what if someone claims that fieriness is the substantiality of fire and makes an35 analogous claim for the case of ceruse? Even so, the heat is completing the substantiality of the fieriness11 of visible fire, and the same holds for whiteness in the other case. So, the identical things are both substantiality-completers and not qualities, and qualities and not substantiality-completers. And it would be absurd to say that those things that complete substances are distinct from those things that do not, when in fact, their nature is identical.40
Therefore, are the expressed principles that produced these things themselves wholly substantial, while the products in the sensible world as a result have as a qualification what in the intelligible world is Substance?12 Hence, we are always making mistakes about what something is, slipping up in our investigations into it and settling for what is merely qualifying.13 For fire is not what we claim it is when we focus on45 its qualifications. Rather, substance is one thing, and what we now see and what we focus on in ordinary language leads us away from what it is with the result that we end up defining it by its qualifications. And it only makes sense that this happens in the case of sensible things, since none of them is Substance but only affections of a substance.14
And this raises the question of how substance comes to be from what50 are not substances.15 Now it has been said16 that what comes to be must not be identical with that from which it comes to be, but, in fact, we really should not say that what comes to be is even a substance. But how was it that we said that there is Substance in the intelligible world that is not from Substance?17 We shall respond that Substance in the intelligible world, having its being in a purer and more sovereign manner, is – to the55 extent that this is compatible with differentiae – really Substance,18 or rather it is called ‘Substance’ only once these activities have been added to it.19 And while it appears to be the completed perfection of that [One], it is perhaps more deficient due to this addition and by its lack of simplicity, being rather already separated from the [One].
§2.6.2. But we must investigate what in general a quality is. For perhaps once it is known what a quality is, our difficulties will be put to rest more effectively. First, then, we must investigate our previous question, whether we ought to say that the identical thing is sometimes a mere qualification and other times completes the substance, whereby we should not have any misgivings about a qualification completing5 the substance – or rather the qualified substance.20 So, in the case of a qualified substance, its substance, that is, its ‘what it is’, must be prior to its being qualified. So, what, in the case of fire, is the substance prior to the qualified substance? Is it body? The genus – body – then, will be substance, and fire will be body that is hot and this whole will not be10 substance; rather, heat will be in it in the way that snubnosedness is in you. So, if its heat is stripped off, along with its brightness and lightness – since these in fact seem to be qualifications – its solidity and three-dimensionality are what is left and matter turns out to be substance.21 But this does not seem right, since it is rather form that is substance,22 and form is a quality.15
In fact, it is not a quality; rather, form is an expressed principle.
What, then, is it that results from the expressed principle and the substrate? For it cannot be what we see and what burns us, since this is a qualification. Unless one were to say that burning is an activity that results from the expressed principle; heating, then, and whitening and the rest are all productive actions. So, we will not have any place left to20 put quality!
In fact, we should not say that those things which are said to complete the substance are qualities, if indeed those of them that derive from expressed principles and from substantial powers are activities; rather, we should say that qualities are what come from outside all substance and do not appear to be qualities in one case and not qualities in other cases, and they add something extra to substance, for example, virtues25 and vices, ugly and beautiful states, states of health, and being shaped in this way or that. Triangle and quadrilateral are not per se qualifications,23 but being triangular in the sense of having received a triangular shape should be called a qualification – though not the triangularity but the shaping. And so also with crafts and adaptive practices. So, a quality is a certain condition that belongs to substances30 whose existence is prior – regardless of whether this condition is acquired later or there from the beginning – a condition such that, even if it were not present, the substance would not be diminished. And this quality can be both easy to change and difficult, so there are two kinds of it; the kind that is easily changed, and the kind that abides.24
§2.6.3. We should not, then, consider the whiteness that belongs to you to be a quality; rather, it is clearly an activity that derives from the power to make white, and in the intelligible world all of the so-called qualities are activities, yet they have received the label ‘qualification’ from our appearance-related approach to them, because each one is a property,5 that is, they define the substances with respect to each other and have their own unique character with respect to themselves.
Why, then, will the intelligible quality be different from sensible quality? For these, too, are activities.
In fact, it is because intelligible qualities do not indicate what sort of thing something is, nor do they indicate a change occurring in the substrates, nor a thing’s character; rather, they indicate no more than the so-called quality, which is an activity in the intelligible world. So, it10 is immediately clear that this, when it has the status of a property of a Substance, is not a qualification; but whenever our reason separates a property among them, not by removing it from the intelligible world but rather taking hold of it and generating another [in the sensible world], it generated qualification as a kind of part of substance, by taking hold of what appears to it on the surface.
If this is right, then nothing prevents heat, too, since it is connatural15 to fire,25 from being a kind of form and activity of fire and not its quality, while again being a quality in other cases, namely, when it is taken all by itself in some other thing and no longer serves as the [defining] shape of the substance but is rather a mere trace and shadow and image, leaving its substance, whose activity it is, behind to be a quality. Whatever20 things, then, are accidental and not activities nor forms that furnish the [defining] shapes of substances, these are qualities – settled states, for example, and other conditions of the substrates ought to be called qualities – but their archetypes, in which they primarily exist, should be said to be the activities of those things. And the identical thing will not be a quality and not a quality, but what has been isolated from its25 substance is a quality and what is connected to it is substance or form or activity. For what is in itself and what is by itself in another, having fallen from being a form and activity, are not identical. And certainly, what is never form but always an accident of something else, this and only this is purely quality.
1 In his VP Porphyry provides two alternative titles to this treatise: On Quality (4.55) and On Quality and Form (24.50).
2 See Pl., Soph. 237D3.
3 Cf. 5.9.10.10–14; 6.2.7–8. See Pl., Soph. 254D4–E5.
4 See Ar., Meta. 1.9.990b34–991a1. Deleting ἡ οὐσία in l. 7 and inserting ἡ before οὐσία in l. 8 with Kalligas and HS5.
5 See Heraclitus, 22 B 50 DK.
6 Cf. 3.2.2.18–23; 3.7.11.23–27; 4.7.5.42–48; 4.9.5.9–11; 5.9.6.10–24. See Anaxagoras, 59 B 1 DK.
7 See Ar., Meta. 5.14.1020a33–b3.
8 Ψιμύθιον is white lead [titanium dioxide] that is used as a pigment. See Ar., EN 1.4.1096b2–3.
9 Adopting the punctuation of Igal and HS4. Cf. infra 2.1–5; 6.1.10.20–27; 6.2.14.14–23; 6.3.15.15–19, 17.8–10. See Ar., Cat. 8.9b33–34.
10 Horace, Od. 4.1.10, describes red swans presumably stained by ferrous water.
11 Reading πυρότητα for the πυρότης of the mss in line 35, which most modern editions delete.
12 The meaning of the words τὰ ἐκεῖ τι (literally ‘the things in the intelligible world are something’), is best conveyed by ‘what in the intelligible world is Substance’. Also, adopting the punctuation of HS4.
13 See Pl. [?], 7th Epist. 343c1.
14 Plotinus’ use of the word ‘substance’ here and below has to be understood with the proviso ‘in the Aristotelian sense of that term’. Cf. 6.3.2.1–4.
15 Cf. 6.3.8.30–34. See Ar., Phys. 1.6.189a33.
16 Cf. 2.5.2–3.
17 Substance arises from that which is beyond Substance, that is, from the One.
18 See Pl., Soph. 248A11.
19 I.e., the activities of all the Forms with which the Intellect is identified. Cf. 5.4.2.32–40.
20 Cf. supra 1.15–29. Plotinus is now referring to the sensible world.
21 Cf. 2.4.4.18–20, 10.15–17; 6.3.8.14–19. See Ar., Meta. 7.3.1029a16–19; Sext. Emp., PH 3.39.
22 See Ar., Meta. 7.3.1029a29–30.
23 See Ar. Cat. 8.10a14–16.
24 See Ar. Cat. 8.9b33–10a9.
25 Cf. supra 1.33–36; 5.3.7.23–25; 5.4.2.32.