Kitap 14
14
ThoseCf. sect. 5. who regard the unequal as a unity, and the dyad as an indeterminate compound of great and small, hold theories which are very far from being probable or possible. For these terms represent affections and attributes, rather than substrates, of numbers and magnitudes—many and few applying to number, and great and small to magnitude— just as odd and even, smooth and rough, straight and crooked, are attributes.
15
Further, in addition to this error, great and small and all other such terms must be relative. And the relative is of all the categories in the least degree a definite entity or substance; it is posterior to quality and quantity. The relative is an affection of quantity, as we have said, and not its matter; since there is something else distinct which is the matter both of the relative in general and of its parts and kinds.
16
There is nothing great or small, many or few, or in general relative, which is many or few, great or small, or relative to something else without having a distinct nature of its own. That the relative is in the lowest degree a substance and a real thing is shown by the fact that of it aloneCf. Aristot. Met. 11.12.1. There Aristotle refers to seven categories, but here he omits activity and passivity as being virtually identical with motion. there is neither generation nor destruction nor change in the sense that in respect of quantity there is increase and decrease, in respect of quality, alteration, in respect of place, locomotion, and in respect of substance, absolute generation and destruction.
17
There is no real change in respect of the relative; for without any change in itself, one term will be now greater, now smaller or equal, as the other term undergoes quantitative change. Moreover, the matter of every thing, and therefore of substance, must be that which is potentially of that nature; but the relative is neither potentially substance nor actually.
