-Plurality is contrary neither to the few
(the many being contrary to this as excessive plurality to plurality
exceeded), nor to the one in every sense; but in the one sense these
are contrary, as has been said, because the former is divisible and
the latter indivisible, while in another sense they are relative as
knowledge is to knowable, if plurality is number and the one is a
measure.
7
Since contraries admit of an intermediate and in some cases have
it, intermediates must be composed of the contraries. For (1) all
intermediates are in the same genus as the things between which they
stand. For we call those things intermediates, into which that which
changes must change first; e.g. if we were to pass from the highest
string to the lowest by the smallest intervals, we should come
sooner to the intermediate notes, and in colours if we were to pass
from white to black, we should come sooner to crimson and grey than to
black; and similarly in all other cases. But to change from one
genus to another genus is not possible except in an incidental way, as
from colour to figure. Intermediates, then, must be in the same
genus both as one another and as the things they stand between.
But (2) all intermediates stand between opposites of some kind;
for only between these can change take place in virtue of their own
nature (so that an intermediate is impossible between things which are
not opposite; for then there would be change which was not from one
opposite towards the other).
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