40 On the Categories
40: On the Categories Next we should consider the notions logically subordinated to being, the ten categories. It should be noted that the name 'category', like the name
'genus', is a name of second intention, although the expressions of which it is predicated are simple terms of first intention.
Nevertheless, 'category' has two senses. In one sense it is used to signify the whole series of terms ordered according to greater and lesser generality.
In the other sense the word is used for the first and most general term in each such series. In the second sense of 'category', every category is a simple term of first intention inasmuch as it signifies things which are not signs.
However, employing the word in the first sense, one can say that in some of the categories there are simple terms of both first and second intention. Put otherwise, some of the categories are composed of both first and second intentions. Thus, in the view which construes intentions or concepts as qualities existing subjectively in the mind, the general term 'genus', for example, belongs in the category of quality; for in that view every genus is a quality.
Now, 'genus' is a name of second intention, but the common term 'color' is an expression of first intention. The same point holds in many other cases.
One might object to the above by denying that a first intention can be more general than a second intention.
Similarly one might argue that a first intention cannot be predicated of a second intention, or vice versa.
Finally one might object that a being of the reason is not capable of being in a category of the real; but since a second intention is a being of the reason, it cannot be in a category of the real.
In response to the first objection it should be noted that one first intention is more general than any second intention; for being is a first intention, yet it is more general than any notion of second intention. Every second intention is a being, but not vice versa.
In response to the second objection it should be said that no first intention is predicated of a second intention when both are suppositing for themselves; for then it would have to be granted that some second intention is identical with some first intention, and that, of course, is false. Nonetheless, a first intention, suppositing not for itself but for a second intention, can be predicated of a second intention. Thus, the proposition 'The genus of substance is a quality' is true; nonetheless, the predicate 'quality' truly applies because it stands not for itself but for the second intention which is a genus. Similarly, in the spoken proposition 'A name is a quality', a name of first imposition is predicated of a name of second imposition. It does not, however, supposit for itself, but for the name of second imposition of which it is predicated. While the relevant proposition is true, no name of second imposition is identical with a name of first imposition.
In response to the third objection, it should be noted that the expression 'to be in a category' has two senses. In the first sense an object is in a category when the first term in that category, significatively taken, can be predicated of the pronoun referring to that object. In this sense nothing is in the genus of substance except particular substances, for nothing is a substance except particular substances. In this sense of the phrase all the universals designating only substances fall under the category of quality, for all universals are qualities.
In the other sense something is in a category where it is the sort of thing which, significatively taken, can have as its predicate the first term in that category, significatively taken. In this sense universals are in the category of substance; for 'substance', significatively taken, is predicable of some universals, significatively taken. Thus, 'Every man is a substance'; 'Every animal is a substance'; 'Every stone is a substance'; etc. In this sense other universals fall under the category of quality, and so on with the remaining categorics.
But then the relevant proposition ('No being of the reason is capable of being in a category of the real') is false whether 'to be in a category' is taken in the first or second sense.
Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that in the view that construes intentions, concepts, and passions of the soul as qualities of the mind, the concept is not said to be a being of the reason because it is not a real thing existing in the nature of things, but rather because it exists only in the reason and is an object that the mind uses for some purpose or other. Thus all propositions, inferences, and mental terms are beings of the reason. Nonetheless, they really exist in nature and are beings more perfect and more real than any corporeal qualities. Therefore, when the Commentator and the Philosopher divide being into real being and being of the reason, or being in the soul and being outside the soul, and afterwards divide real being into the ten categories, they are not dividing the notion into opposites in the way in which we divide animal, say, into the rational and the irrational. On the contrary, this is a division of a word into its meanings in the way that Aristotle, in the first book of the Prior Analytics, divides the contingent into the contingent-necessary, the contingent by chance, and the possible in general.
One of these three notions is predicable of the others, for the following are true: 'The contingent-necessary is possible' and 'The contingent by chance is possible'. In the same way the relevant division of being is not incompatible with the truth of the proposition 'A being of the reason is a real being', provided that we construe 'real being' to be suppositing for something which is a real quality existing in nature. If, however. 'real external being' is taken