6th Ennead | Plotinus | Book 6-2
We may be told that unity and monad have no real existence, that the only unity is some definite object that is one thing, so that all comes to an attitude of the mind towards things considered singly.
But, to begin with, why at this should not the affirmation of Being pass equally as an attitude of mind so that Being too must disappear? No doubt Being strikes and stings and gives the impression of reality; but we find ourselves just as vividly struck and impressed in the presence of unity. Besides, is this attitude, this concept itself, a unity or a manifold? When we deny the unity of an object, clearly the unity mentioned is not supplied by the object, since we are saying it has none; the unity therefore is within ourselves, something latent in our minds independently of any concrete one thing.
[An objector speaks-] “But the unity we thus possess comes by our acceptance of a certain idea or impression from things external; it is a notion derived from an object. Those that take the notion of numbers and of unity to be but one species of the notions held to be inherent in the mind must allow to numbers and to unity the reality they ascribe to any of the others, and upon occasion they must be met; but no such real existence can be posited when the concept is taken to be an attitude or notion rising in us as a by-product of the objects; this happens when we say “This,” “What,” and still more obviously in the affirmations “Crowd,” “Festival,” “Army,” “Multiplicity.” As multiplicity is nothing apart from certain constituent items and the festival nothing apart from the people gathered happily at the rites, so when we affirm unity we are not thinking of some Oneness self-standing, unrelated. And there are many other such cases; for instance “on the right,” “Above” and their opposites; what is there of reality about this “On-the-right-ness” but the fact that two different positions are occupied? So with “Above”: “Above” and “Below” are a mere matter of position and have no significance outside of this sphere.
Now in answer to this series of objections our first remark is that there does exist an actuality implicit in each one of the relations cited; though this is not the same for all or the same for correlatives or the same for every reference to unity.
But these objections must be taken singly.
It cannot reasonably be thought that the notion of unity is derived from the object since this is physical — man, animal, even stone, a presentation of that order is something very different from unity [which must be a thing of the Intellectual]; if that presentation were unity, the mind could never affirm unity unless of that given thing, man, for example.
Then again, just as in the case of “On the right” or other such affirmation of relation, the mind does not affirm in some caprice but from observation of contrasted position, so here it affirms unity in virtue of perceiving something real; assuredly the assertion of unity is not a bare attitude towards something non-existent. It is not enough that a thing be alone and be itself and not something else: and that very “something else” tells of another unity. Besides Otherness and Difference are later; unless the mind has first rested upon unity it cannot affirm Otherness or Difference; when it affirms Aloneness it affirms unity-with-aloneness; thus unity is presupposed in Aloneness.
Besides, that in us which asserts unity of some object is first a unity, itself; and the object is a unity before any outside affirmation or conception.
A thing must be either one thing or more than one, manifold: and if there is to be a manifold there must be a precedent unity. To talk of a manifold is to talk of what has something added to unity; to think of an army is to think of a multitude under arms and brought to unity. In refusing to allow the manifold to remain manifold, the mind makes the truth clear; it draws a separate many into one, either supplying a unity not present or keen to perceive the unity brought about by the ordering of the parts; in an army, even, the unity is not a fiction but as real as that of a building erected from many stones, though of course the unity of the house is more compact.
If, then, unity is more pronounced in the continuous, and more again where there is no separation by part, this is clearly because there exists, in real existence, something which is a Nature or Principle of Unity. There cannot be a greater and less in the non-existent: as we predicate Substance of everything in sense, but predicate it also of the Intellectual order and more strictly there — since we hold that the greater and more sovereign substantiality belongs to the Real Beings and that Being is more marked in Substance, even sensible Substance, than in the other Kinds — so, finding unity to exhibit degree of more and less, differing in sense-things as well as in the Intellectual, we must similarly admit that Unity exists under all forms though still by reference, only, to that primal Unity.
As Substance and Real Being, despite the participation of the sensible, are still of the Intellectual and not the sensible order, so too the unity observed present in things of sense by participation remains still an Intellectual and to be grasped by an Intellectual Act. The mind, from a thing present to it, comes to knowledge of something else, a thing not presented; that is, it has a prior knowledge. By this prior knowledge it recognises Being in a particular being; similarly when a thing is one it can affirm unity as it can affirm also duality and multiplicity.
It is impossible to name or conceive anything not making one or two or some number; equally impossible that the thing should not exist without which nothing can possibly be named or conceived; impossible to deny the reality of that whose existence is a necessary condition of naming or affirming anything; what is a first need, universally, to the formation of every concept and every proposition must exist before reasoning and thinking; only as an existent can it be cited to account for the stirring of thought. If Unity is necessary to the substantial existence of all that really is — and nothing exists which is not one — Unity must precede Reality and be its author. It is therefore, an existent Unity, not an existent that develops Unity; considered as Being-with-Unity it would be a manifold, whereas in the pure Unity there is no Being save in so far as Unity attends to producing it. As regards the word “This,” it is nat a bare word; it affirms an indicated existence without using the name, it tells of a certain presence, whether a substance or some other existent; any This must be significant; it is no attitude of the mind applying itself to a non-existent; the This shows a thing present, as much as if we used the strict name of the object.
To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely legitimate:
The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only because something else stands in a state which it does not itself share; to stray from its unity it must itself suffer division into duality or the still wider plurality.
If by division the one identical mass can become a duality without loss of quantity, clearly the unity it possessed and by this destructive division lost was something distinct. What may be alternatively present and absent to the same subject must be classed among Real-Beings, regardless of position; an accidental elsewhere, it must have reality in itself whether it be manifested in things of sense or in the Intellectual — an accidental in the Laters but self-existent in the higher, especially in the First in its aspect of Unity developing into Being. We may be told that Unity may lose that character without change in itself, becoming duality by association with something else; but this is not true; unity does not become two things; neither the added nor what takes the addition becomes two; each remains the one thing it was; the duality is predicable of the group only, the unity remaining unchanged in each of those unchanged constituents.
Two and the Dyad are not essentially relative: if the only condition to the construction of duality were meeting and association such a relation might perhaps constitute Twoness and Duality; but in fact we see Duality produced by the very opposite process, by the splitting apart of a unity. This shows that duality — or any other such numerical form — is no relation produced either by scission or association. If one configuration produces a certain thing it is impossible that the opposite should produce the same so that the thing may be identified with the relation.
What then is the actual cause?
Unity is due to the presence of Unity; duality to that of Duality; it is precisely as things are white by Whiteness, just by Justice, beautiful by Beauty. Otherwise we must reject these universals and call in relation here also: justice would arise from a certain attitude in a given situation, Beauty from a certain pattern of the person with nothing present able to produce the beauty, nothing coming from without to effect that agreeable appearance.
You see something which you pronounce to be a unity; that thing possesses also size, form, and a host of other characteristics you might name; size, bulk, sweetness, bitterness and other Ideas are actually present in the thing; it surely cannot be thought that, while every conceivable quality has Real-Being, quantity [Number] has not and that while continuous quantity exists, discrete quantity does not and this though continuous quantity is measured by the discrete. No: as size by the presence of Magnitude, and Oneness by the presence of Unity, so with Duality and all the other numerical modes.
As to the How of participation, the enquiry is that of all participation in Ideal Forms; we must note, however, that the presence of the Decade in the looser totals is different from its presence in the continuous; there is difference again in its presence within many powers where multiplicity is concentred in unity; arrived at the Intellectuals, there too we discover Number, the Authentic Number, no longer entering the alien, Decade-Absolute not Decade of some particular Intellectual group.
We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There, is at once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete Living Form; thus it includes the total of living things; the Unity There is reproduced by the unity of this living universe in the degree possible to it — for the sense-nature as such cannot compass that transcendental unity — thus that Living-All is inevitably Number-Entire: if the Number were not complete, the All would be deficient to the extent of some number, and if every number applicable to living things were not contained in it, it would not be the all-comprehending Life-Form. Therefore, Number exists before every living thing, before the collective Life-Form.
Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other living things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that is the Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a member of the Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete; every living thing by virtue of having life, is There, There in the Life-form, and man is There also, in the Intellectual, in so far as he is intellect, for all intelligences are severally members of That. Now all this means Number There. Yet even in Intellect Number is not present primally; its presence There is the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle; it tallies with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral wisdom, its virtues, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That Principle what it is.
But knowledge — must not this imply presence to the alien? No; knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the rest; every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present to it primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as to soul in its character as soul, where these virtues are mainly potential becoming actual by the intention towards Intellectual-Principle and association with it.
Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number; by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking pure Being to the First: the numbers do not link the lower to the First; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of part is ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality to the Beings.
Hence it is that in our sphere, also, Number accompanies the coming to be of particular things and to suppose another number than the actual is to suppose the production of something else or of nothing.
These then are the primal numbers; they are numerable; the numbers of the other order are of a double character; as derived from the first numbers they are themselves numerable but as acting for those first they are measures of the rest of things, numbering numbers and numerables. For how could they declare a Decade save in the light of numbers within themselves?
But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe as the primal and authentic:
“Where do you place these numbers, in what genus among Beings? To everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certainly brought Quantity in, where you say that discrete Quantity equally with the continuous holds place among Beings; but you go on to say that there are the numbers belonging to the Firsts and then talk of other numbers quite distinct, those of reckoning; tell us how you arrange all this, for there is difficulty here. And then, the unity in sense-things — is that a quantity or is quantity here just so many units brought together, the unity being the starting-point of quantity but not quantity itself? And, if the starting-point, is it a kindred thing or of another genus? All this you owe it to us to make clear.”
Be it so; we begin by pointing out a distinction:
You take one thing with another — for we must first deal with objects of sense — a dog and a man, or two men; or you take a group and affirm ten, a decade of men: in this case the number affirmed is not a Reality, even as Reality goes in the sphere of sense, but is purely Quantity: similarly when you resolve into units, breaking up the decade, those units are your principle of Quantity since the single individual is not a unity absolute.
But the case is different when you consider one man in himself and affirm a certain number, duality, for example, in that he is at once living and reasoning.
By this analysis and totalling, you get quantity; but there are two objects under consideration and each of these is one; each of the unities contributes to the complete being and the oneness is inherent in each; this is another kind of number; number essential; even the duality so formed is no posterior; it does not signify a quantity apart from the thing but the quantity in the essence which holds the thing together. The number here is no mere result of your detailing; the things exist of themselves and are not brought together by your reckoning, but what has it to do with essential reality that you count one man in with another? There is here no resultant unity such as that of a choir — the decade is real only to you who count the ten; in the ten of your reckoning there cannot be a decade without a unitary basis; it is you that make the ten by your counting, by fixing that tenness down to quantity; in choir and army there is something more than that, something not of your placing.
But how do you come to have a number to place?
The Number inherent apart from any enumeration has its own manner of being, but the other, that resulting upon the appearance of an external to be appraised by the Number within yourself, is either an Act of these inherent numbers or an Act in accordance with them; in counting we produce number and so bring quantity into being just as in walking we bring a certain movement into being.
But what of that “Number within us having its own manner of being”?
It is the Number of our essence. “Our essence” we read “partakes of Number and harmony and, also, is Number and harmony.” “Neither body nor magnitude,” someone says: soul, then, is Number since it is essence. The number belonging to body is an essence of the order of body; the number belonging to soul constitutes the essences of souls.
In the Intellectuals, all, if the Absolute Living-Form, there is a multiple — a triad, let us say — that Triad of the Living-Form is of the nature of essence: and the Triad prior to any living thing, Triad in the realm of Being, is a principle of essence.
When you enumerate two things — say, animal and beauty — each of these remains one thing; the number is your production; it lay within yourself; it is you that elaborate quantity, here the dyad. But when you declare virtue to be a Tetrad, you are affirming a Tetrad which does actually exist; the parts, so to speak, make one thing; you are taking as the object of your act a Unity — Tetrad to which you accommodate the Tetrad within yourself.
But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this reasoning set it under limit?
And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number are in contradiction.
How, then, do we come to use the term? Is it that we think of Number as we think of an infinite line, not with the idea that any such lire exists but that even the very greatest — that of the [path of the] universe, for example — may be thought of as still greater? So it might be with number; let it be fixed, yet we still are free to think of its double, though not of course to produce the doubled quantity since it is impossible to join to the actual what is no more than a conception, a phantasm, private to ourselves.
It is our view that there does exist an infinite line, among the Intellectual Beings: for There a line would not be quantitative and being without quantity could be numerically infinite. This however would be in another mode than that of limitless extension. In what mode then? In that the conception of the Absolute Line does not include the conception of limit.
But what sort of thing is the Line in the Intellectual and what place does it hold?
It is later than Number since unity is observed in it; it rises at one point and traverses one course and simply lacks the quantity that would be the measure of the distance.
But where does this thing lie? Is it existent only in the defining thought, so to speak?
No; it is also a thing, though a thing of the Intellectual. All that belongs to that order is at once an Intellectual and in some degree the concrete thing. There is a position, as well as a manner of being, for all configurations, for surface, for solid. And certainly the configurations are not of our devising; for example, the configurations of the universe are obviously antecedent to ourselves; so it must be with all the configurations of the things of nature; before the bodily reproductions all must exist There, without configuration, primal configurations. For these primals are not shapes in something; self-belonging, they are perfect without extension; only the extended needs the external. In the sphere of Real-Being the configuration is always a unity; it becomes discrete either in the Living-Form or immediately before: I say “becomes discrete” not in the sense that it takes magnitude There but that it is broken apart for the purpose of the Living-Form and is allotted to the bodies within that Form — for instance, to Fire There, the Intellectual Pyramid. And because the Ideal-Form is There, the fire of this sphere seeks to produce that configuration against the check of Matter: and so of all the rest as we read in the account of the realm of sense.
But does the Life-Form contain the configurations by the mere fact of its life?
They are in the Intellectual-Principle previously but they also exist in the Living-Form; if this be considered as including the Intellectual-Principle, then they are primally in the Life-Form, but if that Principle comes first then they are previously in that. And if the Life-Form entire contains also souls, it must certainly be subsequent to the Intellectual-Principle.
No doubt there is the passage “Whatever Intellect sees in the entire Life-Form”; thus seeing, must not the Intellectual-Principle be the later?
No; the seeing may imply merely that the reality comes into being by the fact of that seeing; the Intellectual-Principle is not external to the Life-Form; all is one; the Act of the Intellectual-Principle possesses itself of bare sphere, while the Life-Form holds the sphere as sphere of a living total.
It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we that can conceive the “More than is present”; the infinity lies in our counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived; all stands entire; no number has been or could be omitted to make addition possible. It might be described as infinite in the sense that it has not been measured — who is there to measure it? — but it is solely its own, a concentrated unit, entire, not ringed round by any boundary; its manner of being is settled for it by itself alone. None of the Real-Beings is under limit; what is limited, measured, is what needs measure to prevent it running away into the unbounded. There every being is Measure; and therefore it is that all is beautiful. Because that is a living thing it is beautiful, holding the highest life, the complete, a life not tainted towards death, nothing mortal there, nothing dying. Nor is the life of that Absolute Living-Form some feeble flickering; it is primal, the brightest, holding all that life has of radiance; it is that first light which the souls There draw upon for their life and bring with them when they come here. It knows for what purpose it lives, towards What it lives, from Whence it lives; for the Whence of its life is the Whither... and close above it stands the wisdom of all, the collective Intellectual-Principle, knit into it, one with it, colouring it to a higher goodness, by kneading wisdom into it, making its beauty still more august. Even here the august and veritably beautiful life is the life in wisdom, here dimly seen, There purely. For There wisdom gives sight to the seer and power for the fuller living and in that tenser life both to see and to become what is seen.
Here attention is set for the most part upon the unliving and, in the living, upon what is lifeless in them; the inner bg-sky life is taken only with alloy: There, all are Living Beings, living wholly, unalloyed; however you may choose to study one of them apart from its life, in a moment that life is flashed out upon you: once you have known the Essence that pervades them, conferring that unchangeable life upon them, once you perceive the judgement and wisdom and knowledge that are theirs, you can but smile at all the lower nature with its pretention to Reality.
In virtue of this Essence it is that life endures, that the Intellectual-Principle endures, that the Beings stand in their eternity; nothing alters it, turns it, moves it; nothing, indeed, is in being besides it to touch it; anything that is must be its product; anything opposed to it could not affect it. Being itself could not make such an opposite into Being; that would require a prior to both and that prior would then be Being; so that Parmenides was right when he taught the identity of Being and Unity. Being is thus beyond contact not because it stands alone but because it is Being. For Being alone has Being in its own right.
How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may exist effectively, anything that may derive from it?
As long as it exists it produces: but it exists for ever; so, therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their good. To us, existence is before the good; all this world desires life and wisdom in order to Being; every soul and every intellect seeks to be its Being, but Being is sufficient to itself.