Quality (philosophy)

“ Quality has, in modern philosophy, a psychological connotation, denoting characteristics of perception as much as of real things. It is thus the individual attribute of sensation, that which characterizes or individualizes one kind of sensation so that it cannot possibly be mistaken for any other kind—redness, nausea, hunger, triangularity, are examples of quality. ”

“ Our method of acquiring "knowledge" is limited to a process of establishing quantities, but we can by no means help feeling the difference of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us ”

“ And because we can never point out any one quality in the outside world and say “This is purity, and all of purity; this is goodness; or this good plus this good plus this makes all of goodness”; because of this impossibility we speak of these concepts as having reality somewhere. They are absolutes, universals, abstract quality concepts—the unfound all of which the things we call pure and good are but the part. ”

“ The one is a perception, the other a quality, and to mistake the quality, not merely for a perception, but for the very perception to which the quality gives rise; and to infer thence that the quality must likewise be in the mind, is an instance as glaring as can well be imagined of that most heinous of logical offences, the confounding of cause with effect. ”

“ Talking abstractly, the quality 'true' may thus be said to grow absolutely precious, and the quality 'untrue' absolutely damnable: the one may be called good, the other bad, unconditionally. We ought to think the true, we ought to shun the false, imperatively. ”

“ But what analysis can we adopt which shall prove universally satisfactory? If we rank men according to mental, moral or spiritual attributes, one quality is sure to contradict or affect the other, and it is hard to decide which trait is paramount. ”

“ Absolute perfection of moral character can not be described by a definition; but, as we know that a measurable goodness which we can describe exists, wherein consists the failure or lapse of a thinkable relation, when we reason from that which exists in a measurable degree to that which transcends all degree? We are all the while thinking of goodness or virtue, whether we think of it as limited and imperfect, or as unlimited and perfect. Take another quality—power. We know that there is such a quality as power, wielded by human beings, and guided by their will. ”

“ Secondly, to perceive the height of any excellence, it is necessary to have the most exquisite sense of that kind of excellence through all its gradations: to perceive the want of any excellence, it is merely necessary to have a negative or abstract notion of the thing, or perhaps only of the name. Or, in other words, any the most crude and mechanical idea of a given quality is a measure of positive deficiency, whereas none but the most refined idea of the same quality can be a standard of superlative merit. ”

“ For I, who draw my opinions from a careful observation of the world, am satisfied with knowing what is abundantly sufficient for practice; that if it be not a virtue, it is, at least, a quality which can seldom exist without some virtues, and without which few virtues can exist. ”

“ I shall therefore put together some Thoughts on this Subject, which I have not met with in other Writers: and shall set them down as they have occurred to me, without being at the Pains to Connect or Methodise them.
All Superiority and Preeminence that one Man can have over another, may be reduced to the Notion of Quality, which, considered at large, is either that of Fortune, Body, or Mind. The first is that which consists in Birth, Title, or Riches, and is the most foreign to our Natures, and what we can the least call our own of any of the three Kinds of Quality. ”

“ For when they say “He cannot be qualified,” they can only mean that He possesses no quality; and yet every positive essential attribute of an object either constitutes its essence,—and in that case it is identical with the essence,—or it contains a quality of the object. ”

“ Now, if it have a nature, what hinders this nature from being bad, without this being bad being a quality? Nothing indeed is a quality but what serves to qualify something different from itself; a quality is, therefore, an accident; a quality is that which can be mentioned as the attribute of a subject other than itself.188 But matter is not the attribute of something alien ”

“ In the same manner, therefore, as a quality is an attribute grounded on the fact that a certain sensation or sensations are produced in us by the object, so an attribute grounded on some fact into which the object enters jointly with another object, is a relation between it and that other object. ”

“ The objective mind, it will therefore be seen, is potentially selective, that is to say, the measure of its quality is its capacity to select at will intellectual nourishment from the whole range of humanity and nature, free from the oppression of its psychic environment. ”

“ It is true that what is commonly meant by difference of quality, in the strict sense, always is a difference of intrinsic nature: two things cannot differ in quality without differing in intrinsic nature ”

“ But what quality should be predicated of that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence? Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into the human mind. ”

“ Such completions of a Reality cannot be called qualities since they are its Acts emanating from the Reason-Principles and from the essential powers. A quality is something persistently outside Reality; it cannot appear as Reality in one place after having figured in another as quality; its function is to bring in the something more after the Reality is established, such additions as virtue, vice, ugliness, beauty, health, a certain shape. ”

“ In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. ”

“ But it seems to me false to say that matter is without qualities; for it cannot be said respecting any substance that it is without qualities. But indeed, in the very act of saying that it is without qualities, you declare that it has a quality, by describing the character of matter, which is a kind of quality. ”

“ The truth is that we do not and need not strive to bring into [Pg 280] connection with appearance the idea of any quality which we conceive of as unlimited. What we derive from the phenomenal manifestations of human power and goodness is a consciousness of the qualities of power and goodness. ”

“ It has been made a question whether the denotation of an abstract term may itself be the subject of qualities. Apparently 'weight' may be greater or less, 'government' good or bad, 'vitality' intense or dull. But if every subject is modified by a quality, a quality is also modified by making it the subject of another ”

“ It consists in the distinctness and completeness of the conceptions, together with the purity and accuracy of the knowledge of perception which forms their foundation; therefore the whole of knowledge in all its parts is penetrated by it, and in proportion as it is so is valuable or trifling. With a small quantity, but of good quality, one achieves more than with a very large quantity of bad quality. ”

“ But, as we saw, the whole question is in part one of words, ‘quality’ being a term which is ambiguous. In its lowest meaning it applies to anything that in any sense qualifies and makes anything to be somewhat. It therefore will cover everything except the Universe taken as such. ”

“ Two kinds of qualities must be distinguished; the essential quality, which is a peculiarity of its being, and the mere quality, which affects the being's classification. The mere quality introduces no change in the essence, and causes none of its characteristics to disappear; but, when the being exists already, and is complete, this quality gives it a certain exterior disposition; and, whether in the case of a soul or body, adds something to it. ”

“ It is, however, in many cases apparent, that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view. ”

“ When we ascribe a quality to an object, we intend to assert that the object affects us in a manner similar to that in which we are affected by a known class of objects. A quality, indeed, in the custom of language, does not admit of individuality: it is supposed to be one thing common to many; which, being explained, means that it is the name of a resemblance among our sensations, and not a name of the individual sensations which resemble. ”

“ And that which men of practical wisdom, either all, or more, or the best of them, would judge, or have judged, to be a greater good, must necessarily be such, either absolutely or in so far as they have judged as men of practical wisdom. The same may be said in regard to everything else; for the nature, quantity, and quality of things are such as would be defined by science and practical wisdom. ”

“ What we call a complement of being should not be termed a quality, because they are actualizations of being, actualizations which proceed from the reasons and the essential potentialities. Qualities are therefore something outside of being; something which does not at times seem to be, and at other times does not seem not to be qualities; something which adds to being something that is not necessary; for example, virtues and vices, ugliness and beauty, health, and individual resemblance. ”

“ And the remedy for this is always to recur to the original nature of Being as altogether Good, and then to speak to ourselves thus: "My thought must continually externalise something, for that is its inherent quality, which nothing can ever alter. ”

“ The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms—the incarnation of the spirit. ”

“ That there must be an indefinite number of such terms is obvious, on reflection; since we cannot define anything except by an analysis, which, when carried as far as it will go, refers us to something, which is simply different from anything else, and which by that ultimate difference explains the peculiarity of the whole which we are defining: for every whole contains some parts which are common to other wholes also. There is, therefore, no intrinsic difficulty in the contention that ‘good’ denotes a simple and indefinable quality. There are many other instances of such qualities. ”

“ The SECOND quality, which I discover in these passions, and which I likewise consider an an original quality, is their sensations, or the peculiar emotions they excite in the soul, and which constitute their very being and essence. ”

“ Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree. ”

“ There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality. ”

“ But it is something much more than a mere surface quality. When it is real and part of the whole character, and not put on from time to time for effect, it reaches a long way down to what is deepest and most significant in a man's moral nature. ”

“ In nature, though a substance cannot exist without its qualities, nor a quality without a substance; yet in our conception of these, a material difference may be remarked. I cannot conceive a quality but as belonging to some subject: it makes indeed a part of the idea which is formed of the subject. ”

“ If a man is insensibly determining the quality of his work by everything which he is doing; if he is fixing the excellence of its workmanship by the standards he is accepting and the habits he is forming; if he is creating in advance its spiritual content and significance by the quality which his own nature is unconsciously taking on; and if he is determining its quantity and force by the strength, persistence, and steadfastness which he is developing, it is clear that work rests ultimately upon character, and that character conditions work in quality, content, skill, and mass. ”

“ For our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. ”

“ One grows tired of endless chatter concerning the march of Progress towards Perfection, and of the assumption underlying it that Perfection—as usually defined—is a quality which any one need desire in anything. ”

“ But it turns out that he includes among "excellences," intellectual excellence, and even that he thinks that the best and most perfect excellence of which he speaks is a particular kind of intellectual excellence, which no one would think of calling a moral quality, namely, the sort of excellence which [Pg 325] makes a man a good philosopher. ”

“ Both extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so pure when extracted that they contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and higher nature. All the while it is THEIR nature. It is the nature of truths to be validated, verified. It pays for our ideas to be validated. Our obligation to seek truth is part of our general obligation to do what pays. The payments true ideas bring are the sole why of our duty to follow them. ”