Page:Enneads (IA enneads05plot).pdf/163
therefore is within ourselves, something latent in our minds independently of any concrete one thing.
[An objector speaks:—] "But the unity we thus possess comes by our acceptance of a certain idea or impression from things external; it is a notion derived from an object. Those that take the notion of numbers and of unity to be but one species of the notions held to be inherent in the mind must allow to numbers and to unity the reality they ascribe to any of the others and upon occasion they must be met; but no such real existence can be posited when the concept is taken to be an attitude or notion rising in us as a by-product of the objects; this happens when we say This, What, and still more obviously in the affirmations "Crowd, Festival, Army, Multiplicity." As multiplicity is nothing apart from certain constituent items and the festival nothing apart from the people gathered happily at the rites, so when we affirm unity we are not thinking of some Oneness self-standing, unrelated. And there are many other such cases; for instance "on the right," "Above" and their opposites; what is there of reality about this "On-the-right-ness" but the fact that two different positions are occupied? So with "Above": "Above" and "Below" are a mere matter of position and have no significance outside of this sphere.
Now in answer to this series of objections our first remark is that there does exist an actuality implicit in each one of the relations cited; though this is not the same for all or the same for correlatives or the same for every reference to unity.
But these objections must be taken singly.
13.
It cannot reasonably be thought that the notion of unity is derived from the object since this is physical—man, animal, even stone, a presentation of that order is something very different from unity (which must be a thing of the Intellectual); if that presentation were unity, the mind could never affirm unity unless of that given thing, man, for example.
Then again, just as in the case of "On the right" or other such