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Perhaps, however, it must be utterly denied that unity is even the cause of other things; they should be considered rather as its parts or elements—if the terms may be allowed,—their totality constituting a single entity which our thinking divides. All unity though it be, it goes by a wonderful power out into everything; it appears as many and becomes many when there is motion; the fecundity of its nature causes the One to be no longer one, and we, displaying what we call its parts, consider them each as a unity and make them into "genera," unaware of our failure to see the whole at once. We display it, then, in parts, though, unable to restrain their natural tendency to coalesce, we bring these parts together again, resign them to the whole and allow them to become a unity, or rather to be a unity.
All this will become clearer in the light of further consideration—when, that is to say, we have ascertained the number of the genera; for thus we shall also discover their causes. it is not enough to deny; we must advance by dint of thought and comprehension. The way is clear:—
4.
If we had to ascertain the nature of body and the place it holds in the universe, surely we should take some sample of body, say stone, and examine into what constituents it may be divided. There would be what we think of as the substrate of stone, its quantity—in this case, a magnitude; its quality—for example, the colour of stone. As with stone, so with every other body: we should see that in this thing, body, there are three distinguishable characteristics—the pseudosubstance, the quantity, the quality—though they all make one and are only logically trisected, the three being found to constitute the unit thing, body. If motion were equally inherent in its constitution, we should include this as well, and the four would form a unity, the single body depending upon them all for its unity and characteristic nature.
The same method must be applied in examining the Intellectual Substance and the genera and first-principles of the Intellectual sphere.