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unity come to apply to each and to all: it must therefore be prior also to even movement, prior to Being, since without unity these could not be each one thing: of course what is here meant is not the unity postulated as transcending Being but the unity predicable of the Ideas which constitute each several thing. So too there is a dekad prior to the subject in which we affirm it; this prior would be the dekad absolute, for certainly the thing in which the dekad is observed is not that absolute.

Is this unity, then, connate and coexistent to the Beings? Suppose it coexistent merely as an accidental like health in man it still must exist of itself; suppose it present as an element in a compound, there must first exist unity and the unity absolute that can thus enter into composition; moreover if it were compounded with an object brought into being by its agency it would make that object only spuriously a unity; its entry would produce a duality.

But what of the dekad? Where lies the need of dekad to a thing which, by totalling to that power, is dekad already?

The need may be like that of Form to Matter; ten and dekad may exist by its virtue; and, once more, the dekad must previously exist of its own existence, dekad unattached.

6.

Granted, then, that there exist, apart from things, a unity absolute and a dekad absolute—in other words, that the Intellectual beings, together with their characteristic essence have also their order, Henads, Dyads, Triads, what is the nature of these numerical entities and how does it come into being? We cannot but think that some reason accounts for their origin.

As a beginning, what is the origin of the Ideas in general? It is not that the thinking principle thought of each Idea and by that act of thought procured their several existences; not because Justice and Movement were thus thought did they come to be; that would imply that while the thought is later than the thing—the concept of Justice must be later than Justice itself—yet the thought precedes what, as founded on the thinking, owes its existence to it. Besides, if Justice