LVI. What are modes, qualities, attributes.
And, indeed, we here understand by modes the same with what we
elsewhere designate attributes or qualities. But when we consider
substance as affected or varied by them, we use the term modes; when
from this variation it may be denominated of such a kind, we adopt
the term qualities [to designate the different modes which cause it
to be so named]; and, finally, when we simply regard these modes as
in the substance, we call them attributes. Accordingly, since God
must be conceived as superior to change, it is not proper to say
that there are modes or qualities in him, but simply attributes; and
even in created things that which is found in them always in the
same mode, as existence and duration in the thing which exists and
endures, ought to be called attribute and not mode or quality.
LVII. That some attributes exist in the things to which they are
attributed, and others only in our thought; and what duration and
time are.
Of these attributes or modes there are some which exist in the
things themselves, and others that have only an existence in our
thought; thus, for example, time, which we distinguish from duration
taken in its generality, and call the measure of motion, is only a
certain mode under which we think duration itself, for we do not
indeed conceive the duration of things that are moved to be
different from the duration of things that are not moved: as is
evident from this, that if two bodies are in motion for an hour, the
one moving quickly and the other slowly, we do not reckon more time
in the one than in the other, although there may be much more motion
in the one of the bodies than in the other.
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