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VI. 2. 10]
ON THE KINDS OF BEING
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Being is a unity in relation to the Absolute, is Being by virtue of its sequence upon that Absolute: it is indeed potentially a plurality, and yet it remains a unity and rejecting division refuses thereby to become a genus.

10.

In what sense is the particular manifestation of Being a unity? Clearly, in so far as it is one thing, it forfeits its unity; with one and thing we have already plurality. No species can be a unity in more than an equivocal sense: a species is a plurality, so that the "unity" here is that of an army or a chorus. The unity of the higher order does not belong to species; unity is, thus, ambiguous, not taking the same form in Being and in particular beings.

It follows that unity is not a genus. For a genus is such that whereever it is affirmed its opposites cannot also be affirmed; anything of which unity and its opposites are alike affirmed—and this implies the whole of Being—cannot have unity as a genus. Consequently unity can be affirmed as a genus neither of the primary genera—since the unity of Being is as much a plurality as a unity, and none of the other (primary) genera is a unity to the entire exclusion of plurality—nor of things posterior to Being, for these most certainly are a plurality. In fact, no genus with all its items can be a unity; so that unity to become a genus must forfeit its unity. The unit is prior to number; yet number it must be, if it is to be a genus.

Again, the unit is a unit from the point of view of number: if it is a unit generically, it will not be a unit in the strict sense.

Again, just as the unit, as appearing in numbers, is not regarded as a genus predicated of them, but is thought of as inherent in them, so also unity, though present in Being, cannot stand as genus to Being or to the other genera or to anything whatever.

Further, as the simplex must be the principle of the non-simplex, though not its genus—for then the non-simplex too would be simplex,—so it stands with unity; if unity is a Principle, it cannot be a genus to its subsequents, and therefore cannot be a genus of Being or of other

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