Compare and discuss ----
"There must always be a discrepancy between concepts [static quality] and
reality [Dynamic Quality], because the former are static and discontinuous
while the latter is dynamic and flowing.' Here James had chosen exactly the
same words Phaedrus had used for the basic subdivision of the Metaphysics of
Quality." -- Robert Pirsig
"Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed
to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original
experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept
insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar
cases—which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus
altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.
Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it
is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these
individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This
awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the
"leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps
woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted—but by incompetent
hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and
faithful likeness of the original model. We call a person "honest," and then we
ask "why has he behaved so honestly today?" Our usual answer is, "on account of
his honesty." Honesty! This in turn means that the leaf is the cause of the
leaves. We know nothing whatsoever about an essential quality called "honesty";
but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions
which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we
now designate as "honest" actions. Finally we formulate from them a qualitas
occulta which has the name "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form,
by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with
no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X
which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast
between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not
originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim
that this contrast does not correspond to the essence of things: that would of
course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as
its opposite." — Friedrich Nietzsche
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