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such and such.

Quality is a term that is used in many senses. One sort of quality

let us call 'habit' or 'disposition'. Habit differs from disposition

in being more lasting and more firmly established. The various kinds

of knowledge and of virtue are habits, for knowledge, even when

acquired only in a moderate degree, is, it is agreed, abiding in its

character and difficult to displace, unless some great mental upheaval

takes place, through disease or any such cause. The virtues, also,

such as justice, self-restraint, and so on, are not easily dislodged

or dismissed, so as to give place to vice.

By a disposition, on the other hand, we mean a condition that is

easily changed and quickly gives place to its opposite. Thus, heat,

cold, disease, health, and so on are dispositions. For a man is

disposed in one way or another with reference to these, but quickly

changes, becoming cold instead of warm, ill instead of well. So it

is with all other dispositions also, unless through lapse of time a

disposition has itself become inveterate and almost impossible to

dislodge: in which case we should perhaps go so far as to call it a

habit.

It is evident that men incline to call those conditions habits which

are of a more or less permanent type and difficult to displace; for

those who are not retentive of knowledge, but volatile, are not said

to have such and such a 'habit' as regards knowledge, yet they are

disposed, we may say, either better or worse, towards knowledge.

Thus habit differs from disposition in this, that while the latter

in ephemeral, the former is permanent and difficult to alter.

Habits are at the same time dispositions, but dispositions are not

necessarily habits. For those who have some specific habit may be said

also, in virtue of that habit, to be thus or thus disposed; but

those who are disposed in some specific way have not in all cases

the corresponding habit.

Another sort of quality is that in virtue of which, for example,