Only by a leap can we reach to this One which is to be pure of all else, halting sharp in fear of slipping ever so little aside and impinging on the dual: for if we fail of the centre, we are in a duality which does not even include The authentic One but belongs on both sides, to the later order.The One does not bear to be numbered in with anything else, with a one or a two or any such quantity; it refuses to take number because it is measure and not the measured;it is no peer of other entities to be found among them; for thus, it and they alike would be included in some container and this would be its prior, the prior it cannot have.Not even essential [ideal or abstract] number can belong to The One and certainly not the still later number applying to quantities; for essential number first appears as providing duration to the divine Intellection, while quantitative number is that [still later and lower] which furnishes the Quantity found in conjunction with other things or which provides for Quantity independent of things, if this is to be thought of as number at all.The Principle which in objects having quantitative number looks to the unity from which they spring is a copy [or lower phase] of the Principle which in the earlier order of number [in essential or ideal number] looks to the veritable One;and it attains its existence without in the least degree dissipating or shattering that prior unity: the dyad has come into being, but the precedent monad still stands; and this monad is quite distinct within the dyad from either of the two constituent unities, since there is nothing to make it one rather than the other: being neither, but simply that thing apart, it is present without being inherent.
But how are the two unities distinct and how is the dyad a unity, and is this unity the same as the unity by which each of the constituents is one thing?
Our answer must be that the unity is that of a participation in the primal unity with the participants remaining distinct from that in which they partake; the dyad, in so far as it is one thing, has this participation, but in a certain degree only; the unity of an army is not that of a single building; the dyad, as a thing of extension, is not strictly a unit either quantitatively or in manner of being.
Are we then to take it that the monads in the pentad and decad differ while the unity in the pentad is the same as that in the decad?
Yes, in the sense in which, big and little, ship is one with ship, army with army, city with city; otherwise, no.But certain difficulties in this matter will be dealt with later.
5.We return to our statement that The First remains intact even when other entities spring from it.
In the case of numbers, the unit remains intact while something else produces, and thus number arises in dependence on the unit:
much more then does the unit, The One, remain intact in the principle which is before all beings; especially since the entities produced in its likeness, while it thus remains intact, owe their existence to no other, but to its own all-sufficient power.
And just as there is, primarily or secondarily, some form or idea from the monad in each of the successive numbers- the later still participating, though unequally, in the unit- so the series of Beings following upon The First bear, each, some form or idea derived from that source.In Number the participation establishes Quantity; in the realm of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One- our word for entity may probably be connected with that for unity.
What we know as Being, the first sequent upon The One, advanced a little outward, so to speak, then chose to go no further, turned inward again and comes to rest and is now the reality and hearth [ousia and hestia] of the universe.Pressing [with the rough breathing] on the word for Being [on] we have the word "hen" [one], an indication that in our very form of speech we tell, as far as may be, that Being [the weaker] is that which proceeds from [the stronger]
The One.Thus both the thing that comes to be and Being itself are carriers of a copy, since they are outflows from the power of The primal One: this power sees and in its emotion tries to represent what it sees and breaks into speech "On"; "einai"; "ousia," "hestia"[Existent: Existence: Essence: Hestia or Hearth], sounds which labour to express the essential nature of the universe produced by the travail of the utterer and so to represent, as far as sounds may, the origin of reality.
6.All this, however, we may leave to individual judgement: to proceed:
This produced reality is an Ideal form- for certainly nothing springing from the Supreme can be less- and it is not a particular form but the form of all, beside which there is no other; it follows that The First must be without form, and, if without form, then it is no Being; Being must have some definition and therefore be limited;but the First cannot be thought of as having definition and limit, for thus it would be not the Source but the particular item indicated by the definition assigned to it.If all things belong to the produced, which of them can be thought of as the Supreme? Not included among them, this can be described only as transcending them: but they are Being and the Beings; it therefore transcends Being.
Note that the phrase transcending Being assigns no character, makes no assertion, allots no name, carries only the denial of particular being; and in this there is no attempt to circumscribe it: to seek to throw a line about that illimitable Nature would be folly, and anyone thinking to do so cuts himself off from any slightest and most momentary approach to its least vestige.