Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 1 (1853).djvu/36

18 seems capable of contraries, yet no one is at the same time "sick" and "healthy," nor a thing "white" and "black" together, neither does any thing else receive contraries at one and the same time. It happens also, that the same things are contrary to themselves, since if the "great" be opposed to the "small," but the same thing at the same time be great and small, the same thing would be contrary to itself, but it is amongst the number of impossibilities, that the same thing should be contrary to itself, wherefore the great is not contrary to the small, nor the many to the few, so that even if some one should say that these do not belong to relatives, but to quantity, still they will have no contrary.

The contrariety however of quantity seems especially to subsist about place, since men admit "upward" to be contrary to "downward," calling the place toward the middle "downward," because there is the greatest distance from the middle, to the extremities of the world; they appear also to deduce the definition of the other contraries from these, for they define contraries to be those things which, being of the same genus, are most distant from each other.

Nevertheless quantity does not appear capable of the greater and the less, as for instance "two cubits," for one thing is not more "two cubits" than another; neither in the case of number, since "three" or "five" are not said to be more than "three" or "five," neither "five" more "five" than "three" "three;" one time also is not said to be more "time" than another; in short, of none that I have mentioned is there said to be a greater or a less, wherefore quantity is not capable of the greater and less.

Still it is the especial peculiarity of quantity to be called "equal" and "unequal," for each of the above-mentioned quantities is said to be