Note 124 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS. (continued 2)

Since the time of Aristotle, the quality of a proposition has been understood to designate its being either affirmative or negative: that being formal, or belonging to its form only. Whether affirmative or negative, it may be true or false: and this is doubtless a quality, but belonging to its matter, not to its form. Plato seems to have taken no account of the formal distinction, negative or affirmative.