The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

which is excessive either relatively or absolutely; it is
the first plurality. But without qualification two is few; for it
is first plurality which is deficient (for this reason Anaxagoras
was not right in leaving the subject with the statement that ‘all
things were together, boundless both in plurality and in
smallness’-where for ‘and in smallness’ he should have said ‘and in
fewness’; for they could not have been boundless in fewness), since
it is not one, as some say, but two, that make a few.
    The one is opposed then to the many in numbers as measure to
thing measurable; and these are opposed as are the relatives which
are not from their very nature relatives. We have distinguished
elsewhere the two senses in which relatives are so called:-(1) as
contraries; (2) as knowledge to thing known, a term being called
relative because another is relative to it. There is nothing to
prevent one from being fewer than something, e.g. than two; for if
one is fewer, it is not therefore few. Plurality is as it were the
class to which number belongs; for number is plurality measurable
by one, and one and number are in a sense opposed, not as contrary,
but as we have said some relative terms are opposed; for inasmuch
as one is measure and the other measurable, they are opposed. This
is why not everything that is one is a number; i.e. if the thing is
indivisible it is not a number. But though knowledge is similarly
spoken of as relative to the knowable, the relation does not work
out similarly; for while knowledge might be thought to be the
measure, and the knowable the thing measured, the fact that all
knowledge is knowable, but not all that is knowable is knowledge,
because in a sense knowledge is measured by the knowable.-Plurality
is contrary neither to the few (the many being contrary to this as
excessive plurality to plurality exceeded), nor to the one in every
sense; but in the one sense these are contrary, as has been said,
because the former is divisible and the latter indivisible, while
in another sense they are relative as knowledge is to knowable, if
plurality is number and the one is a measure.
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7
    Since contraries admit of an intermediate and in some cases have
it, intermediates must be composed of the contraries. For (1) all
intermediates are in the same genus as the things between which
they stand. For we call those things intermediates, into which that
which changes must change first; e.g. if we were to pass from the
highest string to the lowest by the smallest intervals, we should
come sooner to the intermediate notes, and in colours if we were to
pass from white to black, we should come sooner to crimson and grey
than to black; and similarly in all other cases. But to change from
one genus to another genus is not possible except in an incidental
way, as from colour to figure. Intermediates, then, must be in the
same genus both as one another and as the things they stand
between.
    But (2) all intermediates stand between opposites of some kind;
for only between these can change take place in virtue of their own
nature (so that an intermediate is impossible between things which
are not opposite; for then there would be change which was not from
one opposite towards the other). Of opposites, contradictories
admit of no middle term; for this is what contradiction is-an
opposition, one or other side of which must attach to anything
whatever, i.e. which has no intermediate. Of other opposites, some
are relative, others privative, others contrary. Of relative terms,
those which are not contrary have no intermediate; the reason is
that they are not in the same genus. For what intermediate could
there be between knowledge and knowable? But between great and
small there is one.
    (3) If intermediates are in the same genus, as has been shown,
and stand between contraries, they must be composed of these
contraries. For either there will be a genus including the
contraries or there will be none. And if (a) there is to be a genus
in such a way that it is something prior to the contraries, the
differentiae which constituted the contrary species-of-a-genus will
be contraries prior to the species; for species are composed of the
genus and the differentiae. (E.g. if white and black are
contraries, and one is a piercing colour and the other a
compressing colour, these differentiae-’piercing’ and
‘compressing’-are prior; so that these are prior contraries of