Book 14
12
The measure must always be something which applies to all alike; e.g., if the things are horses, the measure is a horse; if they are men, the measure is a man; and if they are man, horse and god, the measure will presumably be an animate being, and the number of them animate beings.
13
If the things are man, white and walking, there will scarcely be a number of them, because they all belong to a subject which is one and the same in number; however, their number will be a number of genera, or some other such appellation.
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.
