[1057a]
[1]
There is no reason why one should not
be fewer than something, e.g. two; for if it is fewer it is not
therefore few. Plurality is, as it were, a genus of number, since
number is a plurality measurable by one. And in a sense one and number
are opposed; not, however, as being contrary, but as we have said some
relative terms to be; for it is qua measure and
measurable that they are opposed.(Hence not everything which is one is a
number—e.g., a thing which is indivisible.) But although the
relation between knowledge and the knowable is said to be similar to
this, it turns out not to be similar. For it would seem that knowledge
is a measure, and the knowable that which is measurable by it; but it
happens that whereas all knowledge is knowable, the knowable is not
always knowledge, because in a way knowledge is measured by the
knowable.1
Plurality is contrary neither to the few (whose real contrary is the
many, as an excessive plurality to an exceeded plurality) nor in
all senses to one; but they are contrary in one
sense (as has been said) as being the one divisible and the other
indivisible; and in another as being relative (just as knowledge is
relative to the knowable) if plurality is a number and one is the
measure. Since there can be, and in some cases is, an
intermediate between contraries, intermediates must be composed of
contraries;
[20]
for all
intermediates are in the same genus as the things between which they
are intermediate.By
intermediates we mean those things into which that which changes must
first change. E.g., if we change from the highest string to the lowest
by the smallest gradations we shall first come to the intermediate
notes; and in the case of colors if we change from white to black we
shall come to red and grey before we come to black; and similarly in
other cases.But change
from one genus into another is impossible except accidentally; e.g.,
from color to shape. Therefore intermediates must be in the same genus
as one another and as the things between which they are
intermediate.But all
intermediates are between certain opposites, for it is only from these
per se that change is possible.Hence there can be no intermediate between
things which are not opposites; for then there would be change also
between things which are not opposites. Of things which are opposites,
contradiction has no intermediate term (for contradiction means this:
an antithesis one term of which must apply to any given thing, and
which contains no intermediate term); of the remaining types of
opposites some are relative, others privative, and others
contrary.Those
relative opposites which are not contrary have no intermediate. The
reason for this is that they are not in the same genus—
1 Cf. Aristot. Met. 10.1.19.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.