Note 133 — Chapter III · CATEGORIÆ.

Trendelenburg, Kategorienlehre p. 222; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnantiis, p. 1054 a.; Simpl. ad Categor. Schol. p. 67. Br. Ποιὰ were distributed by the Stoics into three varieties; and the abstract word Ποιότης, in the Stoic sense, corresponded only to the highest and most complete of these three varieties, not to the second or third variety, so that ποιότης had a narrower extension than ποιόν: there were ποιὰ without any ποιοτὴς corresponding to them. To the third Category, Πὼς ἔχοντα, which was larger and more varied than the second, they had no abstract term corresponding; nor to the fourth Category, Πρός τι. Hence, we may see one reason why the Stoics, confining the abstract term ποιότητες to durable attributes, were disposed to maintain that the ποιότητες τῶν σωμάτων were themselves σώματα or σωματικά: which Galen takes much pains to refute (vol. xix. p. 463, seq. ed. Kuhn). The Stoics considered these qualities as ἀέρας τινάς, or πνεύματα, &c., spiritual or gaseous agents pervading and holding together the solid substance.

It is difficult to make out these Stoic theories clearly from the evidence before us. From the statements of Simplikius in Scholia, pp. 67-69, I cannot understand the line of distinction between ποιὰ and πὼς ἔχοντα. The Stoics considered ποιότης to be δύναμις πλείστων ἐποιστικὴ συμπτωμάτων, ὡς ἡ φρόνησις τοῦ τε φρονίμως περιπατεῖν καὶ τοῦ φρονίμως διαλέγεσθαι (p. 69, b. 2); and if all these συμπτώματα were included under ποιόν, so that ὁ φρονίμως περιπατῶν, ὁ πὺξ προτείνων and ὁ τρέχων, were ποιοί τινες (p. 67, b. 34). I hardly see what was left for the third Category πὼς ἔχοντα to comprehend; although, according to the indications of Plotinus, it would be the most comprehensive. The Stoic writers seem both to have differed among themselves and to have written inconsistently.

Neither Trendelenburg (Kategorienlehre, pp. 223-226), nor even Prantl, in his more elaborate account (Gesch. der Logik, pp. 429-437), clears up this obscurity.