Shall the affections which consist in the forms and powers, and their contraries, the privations, be called qualities?[267] If so, one kind will no longer exist; and we shall have to reduce these things to a unity, or category; that is why knowledge is called a form and a power, and ignorance a privation and impotence. Must we also consider impotence and sickness a form, because sickness and vice can and do accomplish many things badly? Not so, for in this case he who missed his aim would be exerting a power. Each one of these things exerts its characteristic activity in not inclining towards the good; for it could not do what was not in its power. Beauty certainly does have some power; is it so also with triangularity? In general, quality should not be made to consist in power, but rather in the disposition, and to consider it as a kind of form of character. Thus the common element in all qualities is found to be this form, this classification, which no doubt is inherent in being, but which certainly is derivative from it. QUALITY CONSISTS IN A NON-ESSENTIAL CHARACTER. What part do the powers (or, potentialities) play here? The man who is naturally capable of boxing owes it to a certain disposition. It is so also with somebody who is unskilful in something. In general, quality consists in a non-essential characteristic; what seems to contribute to the being, or to add to it, as color, whiteness, and color in general, contributes to the beings as far as it constitutes something distinct therefrom, and is its actualization; but it occupies a rank inferior to being; and though derived therefrom, it adds itself thereto as something foreign, as an image and adumbration. UGLY QUALITIES ARE IMPERFECT REASONS. If quality consist in a form, in a character and a reason, how could one thus explain impotence and ugliness? We shall have to do so by imperfect reasons, as is generally recognized in the case of ugliness.[268] But how can a "reason" be said to explain sickness? It contains the reason of health, but somewhat altered. Besides, it is not necessary to reduce everything to a reason; it is sufficient to recognize, as common characteristic, a certain disposition foreign to being, such that what is added to being be a quality of the subject. Triangularity is a quality of the subject in which it is located, not by virtue of its triangularity, but of its location in this subject, and of enduing it with its form. Humanity has also given to man his shape, or rather, his being. THERE IS ONLY ONE KIND OF QUALITY; OF WHICH CAPACITY AND DISPOSITION PARTAKE.