That which is most distant in a straight line is contrary in place.
That is successive which is after the beginning (the order being
determined by position or form or in some other way) and has nothing
of the same class between it and that which it succeeds, e.g. lines in
the case of a line, units in that of a unit, or a house in that of a
house. (There is nothing to prevent a thing of some other class from
being between.) For the successive succeeds something and is something
later; 'one' does not succeed 'two', nor the first day of the month
the second. That which, being successive, touches, is contiguous.
(Since all change is between opposites, and these are either
contraries or contradictories, and there is no middle term for
contradictories, clearly that which is between is between contraries.)
The continuous is a species of the contiguous. I call two things
continuous when the limits of each, with which they touch and by which
they are kept together, become one and the same, so that plainly the
continuous is found in the things out of which a unity naturally
arises in virtue of their contact. And plainly the successive is the
first of these concepts (for the successive does not necessarily
touch, but that which touches is successive; and if a thing is
continuous, it touches, but if it touches, it is not necessarily
continuous; and in things in which there is no touching, there is no
organic unity); therefore a point is not the same as a unit; for
contact belongs to points, but not to units, which have only
succession; and there is something between two of the former, but
not between two of the latter.
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