20. Does every quality have an opposite?[410] As to vice and virtue,
there is, between the extremes, an intermediary quality which is
the opposite of both,[411] but, with colors, the intermediaries
are not contraries. This might be explained away on the ground that
the intermediary colors are blends of the extreme colors. However,
we ought not to have divided colors in extremes and intermediaries,
and opposed them to each other; but rather have divided the genus of
color into black and white, and then have shown that other colors are
composed of these two, or differentiated another color that would be
intermediate, even though composite. If it be said that intermediary
colors are not opposite to the extremes because opposition is not
composed of a simple difference, but of a maximal difference,[413] it
will have to be answered that this maximal difference results from
having interposed intermediaries; if these were removed, the maximal
difference would have no scale of comparison. To the objection that
yellow approximates white more than black, and that the sense of sight
supports this contention; that it is the same with liquids where there
is no intermediary between cold and hot; it must be answered that
white and yellow and other colors compared to each other similarly
likewise differ completely; and, because of this their difference,
constitute contrary qualities; they are contrary, not because they
have intermediaries, but because of their characteristic nature. Thus
health and sickness are contraries, though they have no intermediaries.
Could it be said that they are contraries because their effects differ
maximally? But how could this difference be recognized as maximal since
there are no intermediaries which show the same characteristics at
a less degree? The difference between health and sickness could not
therefore be demonstrated to be maximal. Consequently, oppositeness
will have to be analyzed as something else than maximal difference.
Does this mean only a great difference? Then we must in return ask
whether this "great" mean "greater by opposition to something
smaller," or "great absolutely"? In the first case, the things which
have no intermediary could not be opposites; in the second, as it is
easily granted that there is a great difference between one nature and
another, and as we have nothing greater to serve as measure for this
distance, we shall have to examine by what characteristics oppositeness
might be recognized.