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PLOTINUS

things. If it is nevertheless to be a genus, everything of which it is a genus must be taken as a unit—a notion which implies the separation of unity from substance: it will not, therefore, be all-embracing. Just as Being is not a genus of everything but only of species each of which is a being, so too unity will be a genus of species each of which is a unity. But that raises the question of what difference there is between one thing and another in so far as they are both units, corresponding to the difference between one being and another.

Unity, it may be suggested, is divided in its conjunction with Being and Substance; Being because it is so divided is considered a genus—the one genus manifested in many particulars; why then should not unity be similarly a genus, inasmuch as its manifestations are as many as those of Substance and it is divided into as many particulars?

In the first place, the mere fact that an entity inheres in many things is not enough to make it a genus of those things or of anything else: in a word, a common property need not be a genus. The point inherent in a line is not a genus of lines, or a genus at all; nor again, as we have observed, is the unity latent in numbers a genus either of the numbers or of anything else: genus demands that the common property of diverse objects involve also differences arising out of its own character, that it form species, and that it belong to the essence of the objects. But what differences can there be in unity? What species does it engender? If it produces the same species as we find in connection with Being, it must be identical with Being: only the name will differ, and the term Being may well suffice.

11.

We are bound however to enquire under what mode unity is contained in Being. How is what is termed the "dividing" effected—especially the dividing of the genera Being and unity? Is it the same division, or is it different in the two cases?

First then:—In what sense, precisely, is any given particular called and known to be a unity? Secondly:—Does unity as used of Being carry the same connotation as in reference to the Absolute?

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