Select Works, Section 458

Section 5 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.