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which they
are predicated: it is not true to say that everything that may be
good or bad must be either good or bad. These pairs of contraries
have intermediates: the intermediates between white and black are
grey, sallow, and all the other colours that come between; the
intermediate between good and bad is that which is neither the one
nor the other.
    Some intermediate qualities have names, such as grey and sallow
and all the other colours that come between white and black; in
other cases, however, it is not easy to name the intermediate, but
we must define it as that which is not either extreme, as in the
case of that which is neither good nor bad, neither just nor
unjust.
    (iii) ‘privatives’ and ‘Positives’ have reference to the same
subject. Thus, sight and blindness have reference to the eye. It is
a universal rule that each of a pair of opposites of this type has
reference to that to which the particular ‘positive’ is natural. We
say that that is capable of some particular faculty or possession
has suffered privation when the faculty or possession in question
is in no way present in that in which, and at the time at which, it
should naturally be present. We do not call that toothless which
has not teeth, or that blind which has not sight, but rather that
which has not teeth or sight at the time when by nature it should.
For there are some creatures which from birth are without sight, or
without teeth, but these are not called toothless or blind.
    To be without some faculty or to possess it is not the same as
the corresponding ‘privative’ or ‘positive’. ‘Sight’ is a
‘positive’, ‘blindness’ a ‘privative’, but ‘to possess sight’ is
not equivalent to ‘sight’, ‘to be blind’ is not equivalent to
‘blindness’. Blindness is a ‘privative’, to be blind is to be in a
state of privation, but is not a ‘privative’. Moreover, if
‘blindness’ were equivalent to ‘being blind’, both would be
predicated of the same subject; but though a man is said to be
blind, he is by no means said to be blindness.
    To be in a state of ‘possession’ is, it appears, the opposite of
being in a state of ‘privation’, just as ‘positives’ and
‘privatives’ themselves are opposite. There is the same type of
antithesis in both cases; for just as blindness is opposed to
sight, so is being blind opposed to having sight.
    That which is affirmed or denied is not itself affirmation or
denial. By ‘affirmation’ we mean an affirmative proposition, by
‘denial’ a negative. Now, those facts which form the matter of the
affirmation or denial are not propositions; yet these two are said
to be opposed in the same sense as the affirmation and denial, for
in this case also the type of antithesis is the same. For as the
affirmation is opposed to the denial, as in the two propositions
‘he sits’, ‘he does not sit’, so also the fact which constitutes
the matter of the proposition in one case is opposed to that in the
other, his sitting, that is to say, to his not sitting.
    It is evident that ‘positives’ and ‘privatives’ are not opposed
each to each in the same sense as relatives. The one is not
explained by reference to the other; sight is not sight of
blindness, nor is any other preposition used to indicate the
relation. Similarly blindness is not said to be blindness of sight,
but rather, privation of sight. Relatives, moreover, reciprocate;
if blindness, therefore, were a relative, there would be a
reciprocity of relation between it and that with which it was
correlative. But this is not the case. Sight is not called the
sight of blindness.
    That those terms which fall under the heads of ‘positives’ and
‘privatives’ are not opposed each to each as contraries, either, is
plain from the following facts: Of a pair of contraries such that
they have no intermediate, one or the other must needs be present
in the subject in which they naturally subsist, or of which they
are