rendered ineffective or speedily removed, are called, not qualities,
but affections: for we are not said to be such virtue of them. The man
who blushes through shame is not said to be a constitutional blusher,
nor is the man who becomes pale through fear said to be
constitutionally pale. He is said rather to have been affected.

Thus such conditions are called affections, not qualities. In like
manner there are affective qualities and affections of the soul. That
temper with which a man is born and which has its origin in certain
deep-seated affections is called a quality. I mean such conditions as
insanity, irascibility, and so on: for people are said to be mad or
irascible in virtue of these. Similarly those abnormal psychic states
which are not inborn, but arise from the concomitance of certain other
elements, and are difficult to remove, or altogether permanent, are
called qualities, for in virtue of them men are said to be such and
such.

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, a