MAGNITUDE AND NUMBERS WOULD BE OF A DIFFERENT TYPE OF QUANTITY.
Why then should sizes also be quantities? Probably because they approximate quantities, and because we call quantities all objects that contain quantities, even though we do not measure them with quantity in itself. We call large what numerically participates in much; and small what participates in little. Greatness and smallness are quantities, not absolute, but relative; nevertheless the Aristotelians say that they are relative quantities so far as they seem to be quantities.[252] That is a question to be studied; for, in this doctrine, number is a kind apart, while sizes would hold second rank; it is not exactly a kind, but a category which gathers things which are near each other, and which may hold first or second rank. As to us, we shall have to examine if the Numbers which exist in themselves be only substances, or if they be also quantities. In either case, there is nothing in common between the Numbers of which we speak, and those which exist in things which participate therein.[253]