Select Works of Plotinus · 533 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 512 (part 1)
Section 4 4.
We are told that number is Quantity in the primary sense, number together with all continuous magnitude, space and time: these are the standards to which all else that is considered as Quantity is referred, including motion which is Quantity because its time is quantitative- though perhaps, conversely, the time takes its continuity from the motion.
If it is maintained that the continuous is a Quantity by the fact of its continuity, then the discrete will not be a Quantity.
If, on the contrary, the continuous possesses Quantity as an accident, what is there common to both continuous and discrete to make them quantities?
Suppose we concede that numbers are quantities: we are merely allowing them the name of quantity; the principle which gives them this name remains obscure.
On the other hand, line and surface and body are not called quantities; they are called magnitudes: they become known as quantities only when they are rated by number-two yards, three yards.
Even the natural body becomes a quantity when measured, as does the space which it occupies; but this is quantity accidental, not quantity essential; what we seek to grasp is not accidental quantity but Quantity independent and essential, Quantity-Absolute.
Three oxen is not a quantity; it is their number, the three, that is Quantity; for in three oxen we are dealing with two categories.
So too with a line of a stated length, a surface of a given area; the area will be a quantity but not the surface, which only comes under that category when it constitutes a definite geometric figure.
Are we then to consider numbers, and numbers only, as constituting the category of Quantity?
If we mean numbers in themselves, they are substances, for the very good reason that they exist independently.
If we mean numbers displayed in the objects participant in number, the numbers which give the count of the objects- ten horses or ten oxen, and not ten units- then we have a paradoxical result: first, the numbers in themselves, it would appear, are substances but the numbers in objects are not; and secondly, the numbers inhere in the objects as measures [of extension or weight], yet as standing outside the objects they have no measuring power, as do rulers and scales.
If however their existence is independent, and they do not inhere in the objects, but are simply called in for the purpose of measurement, the objects will be quantities only to the extent of participating in Quantity.
So with the numbers themselves: how can they constitute the category of Quantity?
They are measures; but how do measures come to be quantities or Quantity?
Doubtless in that, existing as they do among the Existents and not being adapted to any of the other categories, they find their place under the influence of verbal suggestion and so are referred to the so-called category of Quantity.
We see the unit mark off one measurement and then proceed to another; and number thus reveals the amount of a thing, and the mind measures by availing itself of the total figure.
It follows that in measuring it is not measuring essence; it pronounces its "one" or "two," whatever the character of the objects, even summing contraries.
It does not take count of condition- hot, handsome; it simply notes how many.
Number then, whether regarded in itself or in the participant objects, belongs to the category of Quantity, but the participant objects do not.
"Three yards long" does not fall under the category of Quantity, but only the three.
Why then are magnitudes classed as quantities?
Not because they are so in the strict sense, but because they approximate to Quantity, and because objects in which magnitudes inhere are themselves designated as quantities.
We call a thing great or small from its participation in a high number or a low.
Themes
◆Anthropomorphismtheology
Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.
The analogy 'Absolute-Man differs from individual man' uses human characteristics to describe divine principles.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
[auto] The text explicitly distinguishes between Absolute-Soul and Soul, and Absolute-Intellect and Intellectual-Principle, indicating a hierarchical structure of being.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
[auto] The statement 'Whatever the freed soul attains to here, that it is There' suggests a merging or identity between the soul's attainment and the Supreme.
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
[auto] The text describes the 'freed soul' attaining a state where what is attained here is identical to what is There, implying a return to the divine origin.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The text asserts that the Intellectual Kosmos is everywhere and that attained reality is identical to the Supreme, implying an underlying unity.