NOTE D.

DISTINCTION OF THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES

OF BODY.

SI-Historically considered.
§ II. Critically considered.

[References. From Inq. 123 a, 205. From I. P. 316 a, 319 a.]

The developed doctrine of Real Presentationism, the basis of Natural Realism, asserts the consciousness or immediate perception of certain essential attributes of matter objectively existing; while it admits that other properties of body are unknown in themselves, and only inferred as causes to account for certain subjective affections of which we are cognisant in ourselves. This discrimination, which to other systems is contingent, superficial, extraneous, but to Natural Realism necessary, radical, intrinsic, coincides with what, since the time of Locke, has been generally known as the distinction of the Qualities of Matter or Body, using these terms as convertible into Primary and Secondary.

Of this celebrated analysis, I shall here, in the first place, attempt an historical survey; and in the second, endeavour to place it on its proper footing by a critical analysis; without however in either respect proposing more than a contribution towards a more full and regular discussion of it in both.

neous, if History may be called the incidental notices in regard to it of an historical import, which are occasionally to be met with in philosophical treatises.— Among the most important of these, are those furnished by Reid himself, and by M. Royer Collard.

The distinction of the real and the apparent, of the absolute and the relative, or of the objective and the subjective qualities of perceived bodies is of so obtrusive a character, that it was taken almost at the origin of speculating, and can be shown to have commanded the assent even of those philosophers by whom it is now commonly believed to have been again formally rejected. For in this, as in many other cases, it will be found that while philosophers appear to differ, they are, in reality, at one.

1.-LEUCIPPUS and DEMOCRITUS are the first on record by whom the observation was enounced, that the Sweet, the Bitter, the Cold, the Hot, the Coloured, &c., are wholly different, in their absolute nature, from the character in which they come manifested to us. In the latter case, these qualities have no real or independent existence (où xaτà áñýðeiαv.) The only existence they can pretend to, is merely one phaenominal in us; and this In regard to its History-this, as hither- in virtue of a law or relation (vóμ), estato attempted, is at once extremely erro-blished between the existing body and the

§ I.-Distinction of the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Body considered Historically.

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percipient mind; while all that can be denominated Quality in the external reality, is only some modification of Quantity, some particular configuration, position, or co-arrangement of Atoms, in conjunction with the Inane. (Aristoteles, Metaph. L. i. c. 4-Phys. Ause. L. i. c. 5-De Anima, L. iii. c. 1-De Sensu et Sensili, c. 4 -De Gen. et Corr. L. i. cc. 2. 7. 8.;Theophrastus, De Sensu, §§ 63. 65. 67. 69. 73, ed. Schneid.;—Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math. vii. § 135-Hypot. i. § 213;Galenus, De Elem. L. i. c. 2. ;— Laertius, L. ix. seg. 44. ;-Plutarchus, adv. Colot. p. 1110, ed. Xyl.;—Simplicius, in Phys. Ausc. ff. 7. 10, 106, 119. ed. Ald.;-Philoponus, De Gen. et Corr. f. 32. ed. Ald.)

are Sweetness, Bitterness, Sourness, and the like, also Heat and Cold, Whiteness and Blackness, &c. That these are qualities [suchnesses] is manifest. For the subjects in which they are received, are said to be such and such by relation to them. Thus honey is called sweet, as recipient of sweetness, body, white, as recipient of whiteness, and so of the rest. They are called affective [i. e. causing passion or affection*] not because the

The activo-potential term, radarıxis, pri. marily and properly denotes that which can in itself suffer or be affected; it is here employed in a secondary and abusive sense (for rásxw is intransitive), but which subsequently be

came the more prevalent, to signify that which can cause suffering or affection in something else. The counter passivo-potential form,

2, 3.-This observation was not lost on PROTAGORAS or on PLATO. The former on this ground endeavoured to establish the absolute relativity of all human know-atarós, is not, I venture to assert, ever used ledge; the latter the absolute relativity of our sensible perceptions. (Theaetetus, passim.)

4. By the CYRENEAN philosophers the distinction was likewise adopted and applied. (Cic. Qu. Acad. iv. c. 24.)

5. With other doctrines of the older Atomists it was transplanted into his system by EPICURUS. (Epist. ad Herod. apud Laert. L. x. seg. 54. Lucret. L. ii. v. ¦ 729-1021.)

6. In regard to ARISTOTLE, it is requisite to be somewhat more explicit. This philosopher might seem, at first sight, to have rejected the distinction (De Anima, L. iii. c. 1.); and among many others, Reid has asserted that Aristotle again ig

nored the discrimination, which had been thus recognised by his predecessors. (Inq. 123 a, I. P. 313 b.) Nothing, however, can be more erroneous than the accredited doctrine upon this point. Aristotle does not abolish the distinction;-nay, I am confident of showing, that to whatever merit modern philosophers may pretend in this analysis, all and each of their observations are to be found, clearly stated, in the writings of the Stagirite.

In the first place, no philosopher has discriminated with greater, perhaps none with equal, precision, the difference of corporeal qualities considered objectively and subjectively. These relations he has not only contrasted, but has assigned to them distinctive appellations. In his Categories, (c. viii. § 10, Pacian division, by which, as that usually adopted, I uniformly quote,) speaking of Quality, he says:-'A third kind of Quality [Suchness] is made up of the Affective Qualities and Affections (a. θητικαὶ ποιότητες, πάθη.) of this class

by Aristotle, though quoted from him, and from this very treatise, by all the principal lexicographers for the last three centuries; nay, I make further bold to say, there is no authority for it, (Menander's is naught,) until long subsequently to the age of the Stagirite. [The error, I suspect, originated thus:-Tusanus, in his Lexicon (1552), says, under the word,- Vide Fabrum Stapulensem apud Aris. totelem in Praedicamentis ;' meaning, it is probable (for I have not the book at hand), to send us to Faber's Introduction to the Cate. gories, for some observations on the term. The Lexicon Septemvirale (1563), copying Tusanus, omits Faber, and simply refers 'Aris. toteli, in Praedicamentis,' as to an authority for the word; and this error propagated through Stephanus, Constantine, Scapula, and the present day.] But this term, even were subsequent compilers, stands uncorrected to

it of Aristotelic usage, could not, without vio.

lence, have been twisted to denote, in conjunction with worns, what the philosopher less equivocally, if less symmetrically, expresses by rábos, affection.-Patibilis, like most Latin ver. bals of its class, indiscriminately renders the two potentials, active and passive, which the Greek tongue alone so admirably contradis tinguishes. But, in any way, the word is incompetent to Aristotle's meaning in the sense of affective. For it only signifies, either that which can suffer, or that which can be suffered; and there is not, I am confident, a single ancient authority to be found for it, in the sense of that which can cause to suffer, the sense to which it is contorted by the modern Latin Aristotelians. But they had their excusenecessity; for the terms, passivus, used in the 'Categoriæ Decem' attributed to St Augustine, and passibilis, employed by Boethius in his version of the present passage, are even worse. The words affective and affection render the Greek adjective and substantive tolerably well.

This distinction by Aristotle is very com monly misunderstood. It is even reversed by Gassendi; but with him, of course, only from inadvertence. Phys. Sect. i. Lib. vi. c. L.

things to which these qualities belong, | be here likewise observed that Andronihave been themselves affected in any way; cus, as quoted by Simplicius (Categ. f. 55 (for it is not because honey, or the like, ed. Velsii), explicitly states, that the Affechas been somehow affected that it is called tive Qualities are, in strict propriety, not sweet, and in like manner heat and cold qualities but powers (où zoià ánaà moinare not called affective qualities because Txά.) Aristotle himself, indeed, accords the bodies in which they inhere have un- to these, apart from perception, only a podergone any affection;) but they are called tential existence; and the Peripatetics in affective, because each of the foresaid qua- general held them to be, in their lanlities has the power of causing an affection guage not zabrinus, formally, subjectivein the sense. For sweetness determines a ly, but ivegynrıxãs, virtually, eminently, in certain affection in tasting, heat in touch- the external object. Locke has thus no ing, and in like manner the others.' title whatever to the honour generally accorded to him of first promulgating the observation, that the secondary qualities, as in the object, are not so much qualities as powers.

Nothing can be juster than this distinction, and it is only to be regretted that he should have detracted from the precision of the language which it is expressed by not restricting the correlative terms, Affective Qualities and Affections, to the discrimination in question alone. In this particular observation, it is proper to notice, Aristotle had in view the secondary qualities of our modern philosophy exclusively. It suffices, however, to show that no philosopher had a clearer insight into the contrast of such qualities, as they are, and as they are perceived; and, were other proof awanting, it might also of itself exonerate him from any share in the perversion made by the later Peripatetics of his philosophy, in their doctrine of Substantial Forms;-a doctrine which, as Reid (I. P. 316) rightly observes, is inconsistent with the distinction in question as taken by the Atomic philosophers, but which in truth, is not less inconsistent with that here established by Aristotle himself.*

It may

The theory of what are called Substantial Forms, that is, qualities viewed as entities conjoined with, and not as mere dispositions or modifications of, matter, was devised by the perverse ingenuity of the Arabian philosophers and physicians. Adopted from them, it was long a prevalent doctrine in the Western schools, among the followers of Aristotle and Galen; to either of whom it is a gross injus. tice to attribute this opinion. It was the ambiguity of the word oucía, by which the Greeks express what is denoted (to say nothing of Arabic) by both the Latin terms essentia and substantia, that allowed of, and principally occasioned, the misinterpretation.

I may, likewise, notice, by the way, that Aristotle's doctrine of the assimilation, in the sensitive process, of that which perceives with that which is perceived, may reasonably be explained to mean, that the object and subject are then, so brought into mutual relation, as, by their coefficient energy, to constitute an act of cognition one and indivisible, and in which the reality is to us, as we perceive it to be. This is a far easier and a far more consistent interpretation of his words, than the

This observation was, however, only borrowed by Locke from the Cartesians. But of this hereafter.

In the second place, Aristotle likewise notices the ambiguity which arises from languages not always affording different terms by which to distinguish the potential from the actual, and the objective from the subjective phases, in our perception by the different senses. Thus, he observes (De Anima, L. iii. c. 1.) that, Though the actuality or energy of the object of sense and of the sense itself be one and indivisible, the nature, the essence, of the energy is, however, not the same in each; as, for example, sound in energy, and hearing in energy. For it may happen, that what has the power of hearing does not now hear, and that what has the power of

monstrous doctrine of intentional forms or specics; a doctrine founded on one or two vaguo or metaphorical expressions, and for which the general analogy of his philosophy required a very different meaning. For example, when Aristotle (De Anima, iii. 1.) in showing that an objection was incompetent, even on its own hypothesis, dialectically admits that what sees colour is, in a certain sort, itself coloured;'

is this more than a qualified statement of what modern philosophers have so often, far less guardedly, asserted-that colour is not to be considered merely as an attribute of body, since, in a certain respect, it is an affection of mind?-And when he immediately subjoins the reason,-'for each organ of sense is receptive of its appropriate object,' or, as he elsewhere expresses it, 'receptive of the form without the matter;' what is this but to say -that our organs of sense stand in relation to certain qualities of body, and that cach organ is susceptible of an affection from its appropriate quality; such quality, however, not being received by the sense in a material efflux from the object, as was held by Democritus and many previous philosophers? Yet this is the principal text on which the common doctrine of Intentional Species is attributed to Aristotle.