For whence is there to be another one besides unity-itself?
It must be not-one; but all things are either one or many, and of
the many each is one.
Further, if unity-itself is indivisible, according to Zeno's
postulate it will be nothing. For that which neither when added
makes a thing greater nor when subtracted makes it less, he asserts to
have no being, evidently assuming that whatever has being is a spatial
magnitude. And if it is a magnitude, it is corporeal; for the
corporeal has being in every dimension, while the other objects of
mathematics, e.g. a plane or a line, added in one way will increase
what they are added to, but in another way will not do so, and a point
or a unit does so in no way. But, since his theory is of a low
order, and an indivisible thing can exist in such a way as to have a
defence even against him (for the indivisible when added will make the
number, though not the size, greater),-yet how can a magnitude proceed
from one such indivisible or from many? It is like saying that the
line is made out of points.
But even if ore supposes the case to be such that, as some say,
number proceeds from unity-itself and something else which is not one,
none the less we must inquire why and how the product will be
sometimes a number and sometimes a magnitude, if the not-one was
inequality and was the same principle in either case. For it is not
evident how magnitudes could proceed either from the one and this
principle, or from some number and this principle.
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