infinite which is there was all-powerful, and all-perfect, comprehending indeed all things, but being itself incomprehensible. To the all-powerful therefore and all-perfect, the perfect is analogous, possessing a perfection which is intellectual, and secondary to the first effective and intelligible perfection. The whole also which is both intelligible and intellectual is allied to the intelligible whole, but it differs from it, so far as the latter possesses wholeness according to the one union of the one being; but the one of the former appears to be itself by itself a whole, consisting of unical parts, and being appears to consist of many beings. These wholenesses therefore, being divided, differ from the wholeness which precedes according to union and is intelligible. For the wholenesses of this whole are parts of the intelligible wholeness.
In the third place therefore, we must consider number as analogous to the one being. For the one being is there indeed occultly, intelligibly, and paternally; but here in conjunction with difference it generates number, which constitutes the separation of forms and reasons.[1] For difference itself first shines forth in this order, being power indeed, and the duad in intelligibles; but here it is maternal, and a prolific fountain. For there power was collective of the one, and the one being; on which account also it was ineffable, as existing occultly in the one and in hyparxis. But here difference separates indeed being and the one. After this likewise, it multiplies the one proceeding generatively, and calls forth being into second and third progressions; breaking indeed being into many beings, and dividing the one into more partial unities. But according to each of these completing the decrements, the wholes remaining. Very properly therefore does Plato make the negations of the one from this. For here the many subsist, through difference which divides being and the one; since the whole also which is denied of the one, is intellectual and not intelligible. The negation therefore says that the one is not a whole, so that the affirmation is, the one is a whole. This whole however is intellectual and not intelligible. Parmenides also denies the many as follows: “The one is not many; but the opposite
- ↑ For λογον it is necessary to read λογων.
