Categories   

used to denote the other categories; for instance, granted that

justice is the contrary of injustice and justice is a quality,

injustice will also be a quality: neither quantity, nor relation,

nor place, nor indeed any other category but that of 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.