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CHAP. X.]
THE CATEGORIES.
39
since he ever becomes more disposed to virtue, even if he has obtained the smallest, increase, from the beginning. Wherefore he will probably acquire greater increase, and this perpetually occurring, he will at last be transformed entirely to a contrary habit, unless he be prevented by time; but in privation and habit, it is impossible for a mutual change to occur, since it may take place from habit to privation, but from privation to habit is impossible, as neither can he who has become blind, again see, the bald again have hair, nor has the toothless ever yet again got teeth.
7. The peculiarity of affirmative, and negative opposition, that one should be true and the other false. Whatever things are opposed, as affirmation and negation, are evidently opposed according to none of the above-mentioned modes, since in these alone it is always necessary that one should be true, but the other false:[1] as neither, is it always necessary in contraries that one should be true, but the other false, nor in relatives, nor in habit and privation. For instance, health and disease, are contrary, yet neither of them is either true or false; so also the double and the half are relatively opposed, and neither of them is either true or false; nor in things which are predicated as to privation and habit, as sight and blindness. In short, nothing predicated without any conjunction, is either true or false, and all the above-named are predicated without conjunction. Not but that a thing of this kind may appear, to happen in contraries, which are predicated conjunctively, for "Socrates is well" is opposed to "Socrates is sick,"[2] yet neither in these is it always necessary, that one should be true and the other false, for while Socrates lives, one will be true and the other false, but when he is not alive, both will be false, since neither is it true that Socrates is sick, nor that he is well, when he is not- ↑ Vide rules of natural opposition in the common Logical Treatises.
- ↑ These are properly contradictories, one being true and the other false, but the definition of contradictories does not include them as being given by Aldrich of only of universals; the definition however given in Anal. Post. i. 2, 6, will include them—ἀντίφασις δὲ ἀντίθεσις ἧς οὐκ ἔστι μεταξὺ καθ᾽ αὑτήν. Some logicians call the opposition of singulars secondary contradiction. Boethius, p. 613, regards such instances as contradictories; also Wallis, lib. ii. ch. 5. Compare Aldritch's Logic upon rules of contradiction: it is remarkable that he does not mention the opposition of singulars until he comes to the causes of opposition of propositions. Cf. Interpretation 7, Anal. Prior, xi. 15.
