But neither can they differ in quality. For
no attribute can attach to them; for even to numbers quality is said
to belong after quantity. Again, quality could not come to them either
from the 1 or the dyad; for the former has no quality, and the
latter gives quantity; for this entity is what makes things to be
many. If the facts are really otherwise, they should state this
quite at the beginning and determine if possible, regarding the
differentia of the unit, why it must exist, and, failing this, what
differentia they mean.
Evidently then, if the Ideas are numbers, the units cannot all
be associable, nor can they be inassociable in either of the two ways.
But neither is the way in which some others speak about numbers
correct. These are those who do not think there are Ideas, either
without qualification or as identified with certain numbers, but think
the objects of mathematics exist and the numbers are the first of
existing things, and the 1-itself is the starting-point of them. It is
paradoxical that there should be a 1 which is first of 1's, as they
say, but not a 2 which is first of 2's, nor a 3 of 3's; for the same
reasoning applies to all. If, then, the facts with regard to number
are so, and one supposes mathematical number alone to exist, the 1
is not the starting-point (for this sort of 1 must differ from
the-other units; and if this is so, there must also be a 2 which is
first of 2's, and similarly with the other successive numbers). But if
the 1 is the starting-point, the truth about the numbers must rather
be what Plato used to say, and there must be a first 2 and 3 and
numbers must not be associable with one another.
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