22.Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration.Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term "Action" to find its goal in an external object.There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action impassive, while Passion is recognised by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of the patient; whenever Being [essential Being] is produced, the patient remains distinct.
Thus, what is Action in one relation may be Passion in another.
One same motion will be Action from the point of view of A, Passion from that of B; for the two are so disposed that they might well be consigned to the category of Relation- at any rate in the cases where the Action entails a corresponding Passion: neither correlative is found in isolation; each involves both Action and Passion, though A acts as mover and B is moved: each then involves two categories.
Again, A gives motion to B, B receives it, so that we have a giving and a receiving- in a word, a relation.
But a recipient must possess what it has received.A thing is admitted to possess its natural colour: why not its motion also?
Besides, independent motions such as walking and thought do, in fact, involve the possession of the powers respectively to walk and to think.
We are reminded to enquire whether thought in the form of providence constitutes Action; to be subject to providence is apparently Passion, for such thought is directed to an external, the object of the providential arrangement.But it may well be that neither is the exercise of providence an action, even though the thought is concerned with an external, nor subjection to it a Passion.
Thought itself need not be an action, for it does not go outward towards its object but remains self-gathered.It is not always an activity; all Acts need not be definable as activities, for they need not produce an effect; activity belongs to Act only accidentally.
Does it follow that if a man as he walks produces footprints, he cannot be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a result of his existing something distinct from himself has come into being.Yet perhaps we should regard both action and Act as merely accidental, because he did not aim at this result: it would be as we speak of Action even in things inanimate- "fire heats," "the drug worked."So much for Action and Passion.
23.As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would include fatherhood and the complementary relationships, since the father possesses the son and the son possesses the father: in short, it would include all belongings.
If, on the contrary, the category of Possession comprises only the things of the body, such as weapons and shoes, we first ask why this should be so, and why their possession produces a single category, while burning, cutting, burying or casting them out do not give another or others.If it is because these things are carried on the person, then one's mantle lying on a couch will come under a different category from that of the mantle covering the person.If the ownership of possession suffices, then clearly one must refer to the one category of Possession all objects identified by being possessed, every case in which possession can be established; the character of the possessed object will make no difference.
If however Possession is not to be predicated of Quality because Quality stands recognised as a category, nor of Quantity because the category of Quantity has been received, nor of parts because they have been assigned to the category of Substance, why should we predicate Possession of weapons, when they too are comprised in the accepted category of Substance? Shoes and weapons are clearly substances.
How, further, is "He possesses weapons," signifying as it does that the action of arming has been performed by a subject, to be regarded as an entirely simple notion, assignable to a single category?
Again, is Possession to be restricted to an animate possessor, or does it hold good even of a statue as possessing the objects above mentioned? The animate and inanimate seem to possess in different ways, and the term is perhaps equivocal.Similarly, "standing" has not the same connotation as applied to the animate and the inanimate.
Besides, how can it be reasonable for what is found only in a limited number of cases to form a distinct generic category?
24.There remains Situation, which like Possession is confined to a few instances such as reclining and sitting.
Even so, the term is not used without qualification: we say "they are placed in such and such a manner," "he is situated in such and such a position." The position is added from outside the genus.
In short, Situation signifies "being in a place"; there are two things involved, the position and the place: why then must two categories be combined into one?
Moreover, if sitting signifies an Act, it must be classed among Acts; if a Passion, it goes under the category to which belong Passions complete and incomplete.
Reclining is surely nothing but "lying up," and tallies with "lying down" and "lying midway." But if the reclining belongs thus to the category of Relation, why not the recliner also? For as "on the right" belongs to the Relations, so does "the thing on the right"; and similarly with "the thing on the left."25.There are those who lay down four categories and make a fourfold division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and Relative States, and find in these a common Something, and so include everything in one genus.
