6th Ennead | Plotinus | Book 6-1
Book 6
On Numbers.
It is suggested that multiplicity is a falling away from The Unity, infinity being the complete departure, an innumerable multiplicity, and that this is why unlimit is an evil and we evil at the stage of multiplicity.
A thing, in fact, becomes a manifold when, unable to remain self-centred, it flows outward and by that dissipation takes extension: utterly losing unity it becomes a manifold since there is nothing to bind part to part; when, with all this outflowing, it becomes something definite, there is a magnitude.
But what is there so grievous in magnitude?
Given consciousness, there will be, since the thing must feel its exile, its sundrance from its essence. Everything seeks not the alien but itself; in that outward moving there is frustration or compulsion; a thing most exists not when it takes multiplicity or extension but when it holds to its own being, that is when its movement is inward. Desire towards extension is ignorance of the authentically great, a movement not on the appropriate path but towards the strange; to the possession of the self the way is inward.
Consider the thing that has taken extension; broken into so many independent items, it is now those several parts and not the thing it was; if that original is to persist, the members must stand collected to their total; in other words, a thing is itself not by being extended but by remaining, in its degree, a unity: through expansion and in the measure of the expansion, it is less itself; retaining unity, it retains its essential being.
Yet the universe has at once extension and beauty?
Yes; because it has not been allowed to slip away into the limitless but is held fast by unity; and it has beauty in virtue of Beauty not of Magnitude; it needed Beauty to parry that magnitude; in the degree of its extension it was void of beauty and to that degree ugly. Thus extension serves as Matter to Beauty since what calls for its ordering is a multiplicity. The greater the expansion, the greater the disorder and ugliness.
What, then, of the “Number of the Infinite”?
To begin with, how is Number consistent with infinity?
Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number to infinity; though we double, multiply over and over again, we still end with a finite number; though we range over past and future, and consider them, even, as a totality, we still end with the finite.
Are we then to dismiss absolute limitlessness and think merely that there is always something beyond?
No; that more is not in the reckoner’s power to produce; the total stands already defined.
In the Intellectual the Beings are determined and with them Number, the number corresponding to their total; in this sphere of our own — as we make a man a multiple by counting up his various characteristics, his beauty and the rest — we take each image of Being and form a corresponding image of number; we multiply a non-existent in and so produce multiple numbers; if we number years we draw on the numbers in our own minds and apply them to the years; these numbers are still our possession.
And there is the question How can the infinite have existence and remain unlimited: whatever is in actual existence is by that very fact determined numerically.
But, first, if multiplicity holds a true place among Beings, how can it be an evil?
As existent it possesses unity; it is a unit-multiple, saved from stark multiplicity; but it is of a lessened unity and, by that inwoven multiplicity, it is evil in comparison with unity pure. No longer steadfast in that nature, but fallen, it is the less, while in virtue of the unity thence retained it keeps some value; multiplicity has value in so far as it tends to return to, unity.
But how explain the unlimited? It would seem that either it is among beings and so is limited or, if unlimited, is not among beings but, at best, among things of process such as Time. To be brought to limit it must be unlimited; not the limited but the unlimited is the subject of limitation, since between the limited and the unlimited there is no intermediate to accept the principle of limitation. The unlimited recoils by very nature from the Idea of limit, though it may be caught and held by it from without: — the recoil, of course, is not from one place to another; the limitless can have nothing to do with place which arises only with the limiting of the unlimited. Hence what is known as the flux of the unlimited is not to be understood as local change; nor does any other sort of recognisable motion belong to it in itself; therefore the limitless cannot move: neither can it be at rest: in what, since all place is later? Its movement means little more than that it is not fixed in rest.
Is it, then, suspended at some one point, or rocking to and fro?
No; any such poising, with or without side motion, could be known only by place [which Matter precedes].
How, then, are we to form any conception of its being?
We must fasten on the bare notion and take what that gives us — opposites that still are not opposed: we think of large and small and the unlimited becomes either, of stationary and moving, and it will be either of these. But primarily it can be neither in any defined degree, or at once it is under limit. Limitless in this unlimited and undefined way, it is able to appear as either of a pair of opposites: draw near, taking care to throw no net of limit over it, and you have something that slips away; you come upon no unity for so it would be defined; approach the thing as a unit, and you find it manifold; call it a manifold, and again you falsify, for when the single thing is not a unity neither is the total a manifold. In one manifestation it takes the appearance of movement, in another of rest, as the mind envisages it.
And there is movement in its lack of consciousness; it has passed out of Intellectual-Principle, slid away. That it cannot break free but is under compulsion from without to keep to its circling with no possibility of advance, in this would be its rest. Thus it is not true to speak of Matter as being solely in flux.
We have to enquire into the existence of the Numbers in the Intellectual. Are they Ideas added to the other Ideas? Or are they no more than necessary concomitants to the Ideas?
In the latter case, Being, as the first [in the Intellectual] would give us the conception of the Monad; then since Being produces motion and rest, Three exists; and so on for all the other members of the realm of Being. Or perhaps there is one monad for each member, or a monad for the first, with a dyad for its next, since there exists a series, and a corresponding number for every successive total, decadee for ten, and so on.
If, on the contrary, Number is a direct production of the Intellectual-Principle [an Idea in itself], there is the question whether it preceded or followed the other Ideas.
Plato, where he says that men arrived at the conception of Number by way of the changes of day and night — thus making the concept depend upon variation among things — seems to hold that the things numerable precede and by their differences produce number: Number then would consist in a process within the human mind passing onwards from thing to thing; it results by the fact that the mind takes count, that is when the mind traverses things and reports their differences; observing pure identity unbroken by difference, it says One. But there is the passage where he tells us that the veritable Number has Being, is a Being; this is the opposed view that Number is no product of the reckoning mind but a reality in itself, the concept of which is reawakened in the mind by changes in things of sense.
What then is the veritable nature of Number?
Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the things as in a man we see one man, in a being one being and in the total of presentations the total of number?
But how explain the dyad and triad? How comes the total to be unitary and any particular number to be brought under unity? The theory offers a multiplicity of units, and no number is reducible to unity but the simple “one.” It might be suggested that a dyad is that thing — or rather what is observed upon that thing — which has two powers combined, a compound thing related to a unity: or numbers might be what the Pythagoreans seem to hold them in their symbolic system in which Justice, for example, is a Tetrad: but this is rather to add the number, a number of manifold unity like the decadee, to the multiplicity of the thing which yet is one thing. Now it is not so that we treat the ten things; we bring them together and apply the figure ten to the several items. Or rather in that case we say ten, but when the several items form a unity we say decadee. This would apply in the Intellectual as in the sensible.
But how then can number, observed upon things, rank among Real Beings?
One answer might be that whiteness is similarly observed upon things and yet is real, just as movement is observed upon things and there is still a real existence of movement. But movement is not on a par with number: it is because movement is an entity that unity can be observed upon it. Besides, the kind of real existence thus implied annuls the reality of number, making it no more than an attribute; but that cannot be since an attribute must exist before it can be attributed; it may be inseparable from the subject but still must in itself be something, some entity as whiteness is; to be a predicate it must be that which is to be predicated. Thus if unity is observed in every subject, and “one man” says more than “man’s oneness being different from the manness and common to all things — then this oneness must be something prior to man and to all the rest: only so can the unity come to apply to each and to all: it must therefore be prior also to even movement, prior to Being, since without unity these could not be each one thing: of course what is here meant is not the unity postulated as transcending Being but the unity predicable of the Ideas which constitute each several thing. So too there is a decade prior to the subject in which we affirm it; this prior would be the decade absolute, for certainly the thing in which the decade is observed is not that absolute.
Is this unity, then, connate and coexistent to the Beings? Suppose it coexistent merely as an accidental, like health in man, it still must exist of itself; suppose it present as an element in a compound, there must first exist unity and the unity absolute that can thus enter into composition; moreover if it were compounded with an object brought into being by its agency it would make that object only spuriously a unity; its entry would produce a duality.
But what of the decade? Where lies the need of decade to a thing which, by totalling to that power, is decade already?
The need may be like that of Form to Matter; ten and decade may exist by its virtue; and, once more, the decade must previously exist of its own existence, decade unattached.
Granted, then, that there exist, apart from things, a unity absolute and a decade absolute in other words, that the Intellectual beings, together with their characteristic essence have also their order, Henads, Dyads, Triads, what is the nature of these numerical entities and how does it come into being? We cannot but think that some reason accounts for their origin.
As a beginning, what is the origin of the Ideas in general? It is not that the thinking principle thought of each Idea and by that act of thought procured their several existences; not because Justice and Movement were thus thought did they come to be; that would imply that while the thought is later than the thing — the concept of Justice must be later than Justice itself — yet the thought precedes what, as founded on the thinking, owes its existence to it. Besides, if justice is only a certain definite thought we have the absurdity that Justice is nothing more than a definition of Justice. Thinking of Justice or Movement is but grasping their nature; this would mean grasping the non-existent, an impossibility.
We may be reminded that in immaterial objects the knowledge is identical with the thing; but we must not misapply that statement; it does not say that the knowledge is the thing known, or that the reason surveying the thing is the thing, but that the immaterial thing, being an Intellectual object is also a thought; this does not imply a definition or conception of the object; the thing itself, as belonging to the Intellectual, can be nothing else than Intellect or knowledge. This is not a case of knowledge self-directed; it is that the thing in the Intellectual transmutes the knowledge, which is not fixed like the knowledge of material things; in other words it makes it true knowledge, that is to say no image of the thing but the thing directly.
Thus it is not the conception of movement that brings movement to be; movement absolute produces that conception; it produces itself as at once movement and the concept of movement, for movement as it exists There, bound up with Being, is a concept. It is movement absolute because it is the first movement — there can be none till this exist — and it is the authentic Movement since it is not accidental to something else but is the activity of actual Being in motion. Thus it is a real existent, though the notion of Being is different.
Justice therefore is not the thought of Justice but, as we may put it, a state of the Intellectual-Principle, or rather an activity of it — an appearance so lovely that neither evening nor dawn is so fair, nor anything else in all the realm of sense, an Intellectual manifestation self-rising, self-seen, or, rather, self-being.
It is inevitably necessary to think of all as contained within one nature; one nature must hold and encompass all; there cannot be as in the realm of sense thing apart from thing, here a sun and elsewhere something else; all must be mutually present within a unity. This is the very nature of the Intellectual-Principle as we may know from soul which reproduces it and from what we call Nature under which and by which the things of process are brought into their disjointed being while that Nature itself remains indissolubly one.
But within the unity There, the several entities have each its own distinct existence; the all-embracing Intellect sees what is in it, what is within Being; it need not look out upon them since it contains them, need not separate them since they stand for ever distinct within it.
Against doubters we cite the fact of participation; the greatness and beauty of the Intellectual-Principle we know by the soul’s longing towards it; the longing of the rest towards soul is set up by its likeness to its higher and to the possibility open to them of attaining resemblance through it.
It is surely inconceivable that any living thing be beautiful failing a Life-Absolute of a wonderful, an ineffable, beauty: this must be the Collective Life, made up of all living things, or embracing all, forming a unity coextensive with all, as our universe is a unity embracing all the visible.
As then there is a Life-Form primal — which therefore is the Life-Form Absolute — and there is Intellectual-Principle or Being, Authentic Being, these, we affirm, contain all living things and all Number, and Absolute Justice and Beauty and all of that order; for we ascribe an existence of their own to Absolute Man, Absolute Number, Absolute Justice. It remains to discover, in so far as such knowledge is possible, how these distinct entities come to be and what is the manner of their being.
At the outset we must lay aside all sense-perception; by Intellectual-Principle we know Intellectual-Principle. We reflect within ourselves there is life, there is intellect, not in extension but as power without magnitude, issue of Authentic Being which is power self-existing, no vacuity but a thing most living and intellective — nothing more living, more intelligent, more real — and producing its effect by contact and in the ratio of the contact, closely to the close, more remotely to the remote. If Being is to be sought, then most be sought is Being at its intensest; so too the intensest of Intellect if the Intellectual act has worth; and so, too, of Life.
First, then, we take Being as first in order; then Intellectual-Principle; then the LivingForm considered as containing all things: Intellectual-Principle, as the Act of Real Being, is a second.
Thus it is clear that Number cannot be dependent upon the Living-Form since unity and duality existed before that; nor does it rise in the Intellectual-Principle since before that there existed Real Being which is both one and numerous.
It remains then to consider whether Being by its distinction produced Number or Number produced that distinction. It is certain that either Number was the cause of Being, movement, rest, identity and difference, or these the cause of Number.
The first question is whether Number can exist in and of itself or is dependent upon things — Two being something observed in two things, Three in three; and so of the arithmetical One, for if this could exist apart from numbered objects it could exist also before the divisions of Being.
But could it precede Being itself?
For the present we must take it that Being precedes Number, is its source. But if One means one being and the duality two beings, then unity precedes Being, and Number precedes the Beings.
Mentally, to our approach? Yes: and in reality of existence as well.
Let us consider: When we think of the existence and the fine appearance of a man as forming one thing, that unity is certainly thought of as subsequent to a precedent duality; when we group a horse with a dog, the duality is obviously the subsequent. But think of that which brings man or horse or dog into being or produces them, with full intention, from where they lie latent within itself: the producer must say “I begin with a first, I pass on to a second; that makes two; counting myself there are three.” Of course there was no such numbering even of Beings for their production, since the due number was known from the very beginning; but this consideration serves to show that all Number precedes the very Beings themselves.
But if Number thus preceded the Beings, then it is not included among them?
The truth is that it existed within the Authentic Being but not as applying to it, for Being was still unparted; the potentiality of Number existed and so produced the division within Being, put in travail with multiplicity; Number must be either the substance of Being or its Activity; the Life-Form as such and the Intellectual-Principle must be Number. Clearly Being is to be, thought of as Number Collective, while the Beings are Number unfolded: the Intellectual-Principle is Number moving within itself, while the Living-Form is Number container of the universe. Even Being is the outcome of the Unity, and, since the prior is unity, the secondary must be Number.
Hence it is that the Forms have been described as Henads and Numbers. This is the authentic Number; the other, the “monadic” is its image. The Authentic is that made manifest in the Forms and helping to bring them to be; primally it is the Number in the Authentic Being, inherent to it and preceding the Beings, serving to them as root, fount, first principle.
For the Unity is source to Being; Being’s Being is stayed upon the Unity as its safeguard from dissolution; the Unity cannot rest upon Being which at that would be a unity before possessing unity; and so with the decade before possessing decadehood.
When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by the fact of awakening to manifoldness; — before, it was a preparation, so to speak, of the Beings, their forepromise, a total of henads offering a stay for what was to be based upon them.
Here with us a man will say “I wish I had such and such a quantity of gold” — or “such and such a number of houses.” Gold is one thing: the wish is not to bring the numerical quantity into gold but to bring the gold to quantity; the quantity, already present in the mind, is to be passed on to the gold so that it acquire that numerical value.
If the Beings preceded the number and this were discerned upon them at the stirring, to such and such a total, of the numbering principle, then the actual number of the Beings would be a chance not a choice; since that total is not a matter of chance, Number is a causing principle preceding that determined total.
Number then pre-exists and is the cause by which produced things participate in quantity.
The single thing derives its unity by participation in Unity-Absolute; its being it derives from Being-Absolute, which holds its Being from itself alone; a unity is a unity in virtue of Being; the particular unity — where the unity is a multiple unity — is one thing only as the Triad is; the collective Being is a unity of this kind, the unity not of the monad but of the myriad or any such collective number.
Take a man affirming the presence of ten thousand things; it is he that produces the number; he does not tell us that the ten thousand have uttered it; they merely exhibit their several forms; the enumerator’s mind supplies the total which would never be known if the mind kept still.
How does the mind pronounce?
By being able to enumerate; that is by knowing Number: but in order to this, Number must be in existence, and that that Principle should not know its own total content is absurd, impossible.
It is with Number as with Good. When we pronounce things to be good either we mean that they are in their own nature so or we affirm goodness as an accidental in them. Dealing with the primals, the goodness we have in mind is that First Hypostasis; where the goodness is an accidental we imply the existence of a Principle of Good as a necessary condition of the accidental presence; there must be some source of that good which is observed elsewhere, whether this source be an Absolute Good or something that of its own nature produces the good. Similarly with number; in attributing the decade to things we affirm either the truly existent decade or, where the decadehood is accidental, we necessarily posit the self-subsistent decade, decade not associated; if things are to be described as forming a decade, then either they must be of themselves the decade or be preceded by that which has no other being than that of decadehood.
It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a subject not itself either found its way in from outside or is the characteristic Act of that subject; and supposing the predicated attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be always present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is the accidental in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at least belongs to the existents, it exists. In the case when the subject can be thought of as remaining without its Act, yet that Act is inbound with it even though to our minds it appears as a later; when on the contrary the subject cannot be conceived without the attributeman, for example, without unity — then the attribute is either not later but concomitant or, being essential to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and Number are precedent.
It may be suggested that the decade is nothing more than so many henads; admitting the one henad why should we reject the ten? As the one is a real existence why not the rest? We are certainly not compelled to attach that one henad to some one thing and so deprive all the rest of the means to unity: since every existent must be one thing, the unity is obviously common to all. This means one principle applying to many, the principle whose existence within itself we affirmed to be presupposed by its manifestation outside.
But if a henad exists in some given object and further is observed in something else, then that first henad being real, there cannot be only one henad in existence; there must be a multiplicity of henads.
Supposing that first henad alone to exist, it must obviously be lodged either in the thing of completest Being or at all events in the thing most completely a unity. If in the thing of completest Being, then the other henads are but nominal and cannot be ranked with the first henad, or else Number becomes a collection of unlike monads and there are differences among monads [an impossibility]. If that first henad is to be taken as lodged in the thing of completest unity, there is the question why that most perfect unity should require the first henad to give it unity.
Since all this is impossible, then, before any particular can be thought of as a unit, there must exist a unity bare, unrelated by very essence. If in that realm also there must be a unity apart from anything that can be called one thing, why should there not exist another unity as well?
Each particular, considered in itself, would be a manifold of monads, totalling to a collective unity. If however Nature produces continuously — or rather has produced once for all — not halting at the first production but bringing a sort of continuous unity into being, then it produces the minor numbers by the sheer fact of setting an early limit to its advance: outgoing to a greater extent — not in the sense of moving from point to point but in its inner bg-sky changes — it would produce the larger numbers; to each number so emerging it would attach the due quantities and the appropriate thing, knowing that without this adaptation to Number the thing could not exist or would be a stray, something outside, at once, of both Number and Reason.