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I have already found in a book this rule:

The comparative structure includes the only when the comparative takes a noun position, example:

I like the smaller of the two.

May you explain me this rule and give more examples? Because I do not understand.

  • the smaller = the smaller one** i.e. - *the one which is smaller* (than all other relevant ones). It's not syntactically necessary to explicitly specify *of the two* in your example. For example, Here are two slices of pie. I'll have the smaller [one], and you can have the larger. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '18 at 13:21

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Basically, if the comparative is used as either the subject or object of the sentence, it's used as a noun - i.e. if you can remove that part of the sentence and get it by asking "Who" or "What".

In this case we have:

Q: Who/What do I like? 
A: The smaller of the two.

An example where this cannot be used:

The first book is smaller.

If you would to remove "smaller" form the sentence and ask:

Q: Who/What is the first book?
A: Smaller.

"Who" doesn't make any sense, while "What" makes some sense but it's used in a different way. Smaller describes the book, not itself. If the answer was the smaller it would not fully answer the question, because it would just raise another - The smaller of what?. The answer needs to have meaning by itself.

Side not on this example. If there was a text before that clearly defines what the smaller is, we could use it. E.g.:

The first book is the smaller of the two. I am going to read the smaller.

Here the smaller clearly means the first book.

Hope this clarifies things a bit, articles can be tricky, you learn them mostly through exposure to the language. :)

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