g which is qualified in
contrary ways at one and the same time.

Moreover, if these were contraries, they would themselves be contrary
to themselves. For if 'great' is the contrary of 'small', and the same
thing is both great and small at the same time, then 'small' or 'great'
is the contrary of itself. But this is impossible. The term 'great',
therefore, is not the contrary of the term 'small', nor 'much' of
'little'. And even though a man should call these terms not relative
but quantitative, they would not have contraries.

It is in the case of space that quantity most plausibly appears to
admit of a contrary. For men define the term 'above' as the contrary of
'below', when it is the region at the centre they mean by 'below'; and
this is so, because nothing is farther from the extremities of the
universe than the region at the centre. Indeed, it seems that in
defining contraries of every kind men have recourse to a spatial
metaphor, for they say that those things are contraries which, within
the same class, are separated by the greatest possible distance.

Quantity does not, it appears, admit of variation of degree. One thing
cannot be two cubits long in a greater degree than another. Similarly
with regard to number: what is 'three' is not more truly three than
what is 'five' is five; nor is one set of three more truly three than
another set. Again, one period of time is not said to be more truly
time than another. Nor is there any other kind of quantity, of all that
have been mentioned, with regard to which variation of degree can be
predicated. The category of quantity, therefore, does not admit of
variation of degree.

The most distinctive mark of quantity is that equality and inequality
are predicated of it. Each of the aforesaid quantities is said to be
equal or unequal. For instance, one solid is said to be equal or
unequal to another; number, too, and time can have these terms applied
to them, indeed can all those kinds of quantity that have been
mentioned.

That which is not a quantity can by no means, it would seem, be termed
equal or unequal to anything else. One particular disposition or one
particular quality, such as whiteness, is by no means compared with
another in terms of equality and inequality but rather in terms of
similarity. Thus it is the distinctive mark of quantity that it can be
called equal and unequal.

Section 2

Part 7

Those things are called relative, which, being eith