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.
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