Section 2

We must inquire, with regard to the substance and nature of unity, in which sense it exists. This is the same question which we approached in our discussion of difficulties 1 : what unity is, and what view we are to take of it; whether that unity itself is a kind of substance—as first the Pythagoreans, and later Plato, both maintain—or whether rather some nature underlies it, and we should give a more intelligible account of it, and more after the manner of the physicists; for of them one 2 holds that the One is Love, another 3 Air, and another 4 the Indeterminate.

Now if no universal can be a substance (as we have stated in our discussion 5 of substance and being), and being itself cannot be a substance in the sense of one thing existing alongside the many (since it is common to them), but only as a predicate, then clearly neither can unity be a substance; because being and unity are the most universal of all predicates.

Therefore (a) genera are not certain entities and substances separate from other things; and (b) unity cannot be a genus, for the same reasons that being and substance cannot. 6

Further, the nature of unity must be the same for all categories.

Now being and unity have the same number of meanings; so that since in the category of qualities unity is something definite, i.e. some definite entity, and similarly in the category of quantity, clearly we must also inquire in general what unity is, just as in the case of being; since it is not enough to say that its nature is simply unity or being.

But in the sphere of colors unity is a color, e.g. white; that is if all the other colors are apparently derived from white and black, and black is a privation of white, as darkness is of light. Thus if all existing things were colors, all existing things would be a number; but of what?

Clearly of colors. And unity would be some one color, e.g. white. Similarly if all existing things were tunes, there would be a number—of quarter-tones; but their substance would not be a number; and unity would be something whose substance is not unity but a quarter-tone. Similarly in the case of sounds, existing things would be a number of letters, and unity would be a vowel;

and if existing things were right-lined figures, they would be a number of figures, and unity would be a triangle. And the same principle holds for all other genera. Therefore if in the categories of passivity and quality and quantity and motion there is in every category a number and a unity, and if the number is of particular things and the unity is a particular unity, and its substance is not unity, then the same must be true in the case of substances, because the same is true in all cases.

It is obvious, then, that in every genus one is a definite entity, and that in no case is its nature merely unity; but as in the sphere of colors the One-itself which we have to seek is one color, so too in the sphere of substance the One-itself is one substance.

And that in a sense unity means the same as being is clear (a) from the fact that it has a meaning corresponding to each of the categories, and is contained in none of them—e.g., it is contained neither in substance nor in quality, but is related to them exactly as being is; (b) from the fact that in one man nothing more is predicated than in man 7 (just as Being too does not exist apart from some thing or quality or quantity); and (c) because to be one is to be a particular thing.