quality, will be
applicable properly to injustice. So it is with all other contraries
falling under the category of quality.

Qualities admit of variation of degree. Whiteness is predicated of one
thing in a greater or less degree than of another. This is also the
case with reference to justice. Moreover, one and the same thing may
exhibit a quality in a greater degree than it did before: if a thing is
white, it may become whiter.

Though this is generally the case, there are exceptions. For if we
should say that justice admitted of variation of degree, difficulties
might ensue, and this is true with regard to all those qualities which
are dispositions. There are some, indeed, who dispute the possibility
of variation here. They maintain that justice and health cannot very
well admit of variation of degree themselves, but that people vary in
the degree in which they possess these qualities, and that this is the
case with grammatical learning and all those qualities which are
classed as dispositions. However that may be, it is an incontrovertible
fact that the things which in virtue of these qualities are said to be
what they are vary in the degree in which they possess them; for one
man is said to be better versed in grammar, or more healthy or just,
than another, and so on.

The qualities expressed by the terms 'triangular' and 'quadrangular' do
not appear to admit of variation of degree, nor indeed do any that have
to do with figure. For those things to which the definition of the
triangle or circle is applicable are all equally triangular or
circular. Those, on the other hand, to which the same definition is not
applicable, cannot be said to differ from one another in degree; the
square is no more a circle than the rectangle, for to neither is the
definition of the circle appropriate. In short, if the definition of
the term proposed is not applicable to both objects, they cannot be
compared. Thus it is not all qualities which admit of variation of
degree.

Whereas none of the characteristics I have mentioned are peculiar to
quality, the fact that likeness and unlikeness can be predicated with
reference to quality only, gives to that category its distinctive
feature. One thing is like another only with reference to that in
virtue of which it is such and such; thus this forms the peculiar mark
of quality.

We must not be disturbed because it may be argued that, though
proposing to discuss the category of quality