Kitap 10
12
And the differences are as we have stated: one case is, if a thing is merely deprived; another, if it is deprived at a certain time or in a certain part—e.g. at a certain age or in the important part—or entirely. Hence in some cases there is an intermediate (there are men who are neither good nor bad), and in others there is not—a thing must be either odd or even.
13
Again, some have a determinate subject, and others have not. Thus it is evident that one of a pair of contraries always has a privative sense; but it is enough if this is true of the primary or generic contraries, e.g. unity and plurality; for the others can be reduced to them.
1
Since one thing has one contrary, it might be asked in what sense unity is opposed to plurality, and the equal to the great and to the small. For if we always use the word whether in an antithesis—e.g., whether it is white or black, or whether it is white or not (but we do not ask whether it is a man or white, unless we are proceeding upon some assumption, and asking, for instance, whether it was Cleon who came or Socrates.
2
This is not a necessary disjunction in any class of things, but is derived from the use in the case of opposites—for it is only opposites that cannot be true at the same time—and we have this same use here in the question which of the two came? for if both alternatives were possible, the question would be absurd; but even so the question falls into an antithesis: that of one or many—i.e., whether both came, or one)—
3
if, then, the question whether is always concerned with opposites, and we can ask whether it is greater or smaller, or equal, what is the nature of the antithesis between equal and greater or smaller? It is contrary neither to one only, nor to both: for (a) it is no more contrary to the greater than to the smaller; (b) equal is contrary to unequal, and thus it will be contrary to more than one thing;
