[1011b]
[1]
But perhaps it is for this reason that
those who argue not from a sense of difficulty but for argument's sake
are compelled to say that the appearance is not true in itself, but
true to the percipient;and, as we have said before, are compelled also to make everything
relative and dependent upon opinion and sensation, so that nothing has
happened or will happen unless someone has first formed an opinion
about it; otherwise clearly all things would not be relative to
opinion.Further, if a thing is
one, it is relative to one thing or to something determinate. And if
the same thing is both a half and an equal, yet the equal is not
relative to the double.If
to the thinking subject "man" and the object of thought are the same,
"man" will be not the thinking subject but the object of thought; and
if each thing is to be regarded as relative to the thinking subject,
the thinking subject will be relative to an infinity of specifically
different things.That the most certain of all beliefs is
that opposite statements are not both true at the same time, and what
follows for those who maintain that they are true, and why these
thinkers maintain this, may be regarded as adequately stated. And
since the contradiction of a statement cannot be true at the same time
of the same thing, it is obvious that contraries cannot apply at the
same time to the same thing.For in each pair of contraries one is a
privation no less than it is a contrary—a privation of
substance. And privation is the negation of a predicate
[20]
to some defined genus. Therefore
if it is impossible at the same time to affirm and deny a thing truly,
it is also impossible for contraries to apply to a thing at the same
time; either both must apply in a modified sense, or one in a modified
sense and the other absolutely.Nor indeed can
there be any intermediate between contrary statements, but of one
thing we must either assert or deny one thing, whatever it may be.
This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood. To say that
what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what
is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says
that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is
false.But neither
what is nor what is not is said not to be or to be.
Further, an intermediate between contraries will be intermediate
either as grey is between black and white, or as "neither man nor
horse" is between man and horse. If in the latter sense, it cannot
change (for change is from not-good to good, or from good to
not-good);but in
fact it is clearly always changing; for change can only be into the
opposite and the intermediate. And if it is a true intermediate, in
this case too there would be a kind of change into white not from
not-white; but in fact this is not seen.1
1 It is not qua grey (i.e. intermediate between white and black) that grey changes to white, but qua not-white (i.e. containing a certain proportion of black).
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