Enneads VI.6: Of Numbers
Two Kinds of Number: Essential and Unitary
Such then is “essential” Number (number that is “Being”). The other kind of number, which is called a number composed of digits, or “unities,” is only an image of the former. The essential Number is contemplated in the intelligible forms, and assists in producing them; on the other hand, it exists primitively in essence, with essence, and before the essences. The latter find therein their foundation, source, root and principle. Indeed, Number is the principle of Essence, and rests in it, otherwise it would split up. On the contrary, the One does not rest upon essence; otherwise essence would be one before participating in the One; likewise, what participates in the decad would be the decad already before participating in the decad.
ESSENCE IS A LOCATION FOR THE THINGS YET TO BE PRODUCED.
10. Subsisting therefore in the manifold, Essence therefore became Number when it was aroused to multiplicity, because it already contained within itself a sort of preformation or representation of the essences which it was ready to produce, offering the essences, as it were, a locality for the things whose foundation they were to be. When we say, “so much gold,” or, “so many other objects,” gold is one, and one does not thereby intend to make gold out of the number, but to make a number out of the gold; it is because one already possesses the number that one seeks to apply it to gold, so as to determine its quality. If essences were anterior to Number, and if Number were contemplated in them when the enumerating power enumerates the objects, the number of the (beings), whatever it is, would be accidental, instead of being determined in advance. If this be not the case, then must number, preceding (the beings) determine how many of them must exist; which means that, by the mere fact of the primitive existence of the Number, the (beings) which are produced undergo the condition of being so many, and each of them participates in unity whenever they are one. Now every essence comes from Essence because essence, by itself, is Essence; likewise, the One is one by itself. If every (being) be one, and if the multitude of (beings) taken together form the unity that is in them, they are one as the triad is one, and all beings also are one; not as is the Monad (or Unity), but as is a thousand, or any other number. He who, while enumerating, produced things, proclaims that there are a thousand of them, claims to do no more than to tell out what he learns from the things, as if he was indicating their colors, while really he is only expressing a condition of his reason; without which, he would not know how much of a multitude was present there. Why then does he speak so? Because he knows how to enumerate; which indeed he knows if he know the number, and this he can know only if the number exist. But not to know what is the number, at least under the respect of quantity, would be ridiculous, and even impossible.