Note 76 — Chapter V · LOGIC OF THE STOICS.

(γ) The category of property. The second category, that of property76 or form, comprises all those essential attributes, by means of which a definite character is impressed on matter otherwise indeterminate.77 If the definite character be one which belongs to a group or class, it is called a common quality—κοινῶς ποιόν·—or, if it be something peculiar and distinctive, it is called a distinctive quality—ἰδίως ποιόν.78 Properties therefore combined with matter constitute the special materials out of which individual things are made;79 and quality in this combination (ποιόν), corresponds, as Trendelenburg has well shown,80 with the form (εἶδος) of Aristotle.81 It may, in fact, like that, be described as the active and efficient part of a thing.82 Aristotle’s form, however, expresses only the non-material side of a thing, whereas quality is regarded by the Stoics as something material—in fact, as an air-current.83 Hence the mode in which a quality is conceived to reside in matter is that of an intermingling of elements.84 The same theory of intermingling applies of course to the union of several properties in one and the same matter,85 and likewise to the combination of several attributes to produce a single conception of quality.86 In all cases the relation is supposed to be materialistic, and is explained by the doctrine of the mutual interpenetration of material things.87 This explanation, indeed, could not apply to every kind of attributes. Unable to dispense entirely with things not material,88 the Stoics were obliged to admit the existence of attributes belonging to immaterial things, these attributes being, of course, themselves not material.89 What idea they formed to themselves of these incorporeal attributes, when reality was considered to belong only to things corporeal, it is, of course, impossible for us to say.90