Problems Concerning First Principles

and there is something beyond the One. For the many need nothing else but the One. Therefore, only the One is the cause of the many. Therefore, the One is entirely the cause; because the One must be the sole cause of the many. For "nothing" is not the cause, because nothing is the cause of nothing; nor are the many themselves the cause; for either the many are uncoordinated, and the many could not be a single cause. And if there are many causes, they are not causes of each other because of their lack of coordination and because of the cycle; therefore, each would be the cause of itself; thus, nothing is the cause of the many. It is necessary, therefore, that the One be the cause of the many, which is also the cause of the coordination within them. For coordination is a kind of concord and union toward one another.

Chapter 3. If, therefore, anyone, while pondering these things, should say 1 that one should be content with the principle of the One, and should add the finishing touch that we have neither a concept nor a suspicion simpler than the One, how then shall we suspect something beyond the final suspicion and concept? If anyone should assert this, we will forgive him 2 for his puzzlement. For such a meditation, as it seems, is untrodden and insurmountable. But nevertheless, from those things more familiar to us, we must habituate the ineffable throes within us toward the ineffable—I do not know how to say it—the communion of this transcendent truth. p. 4 For since in the things here, that which is absolute ascheton unrelated/unbound is in every way more honorable than that which is in relation, and the uncoordinated asyntakton uncoordinated more so than the coordinated, just as the theoretical theoretikos speculative is higher than the political; and as Cronus is to the creator demiourgos demiurge; and as Being is to the forms and the One is to the many, of which the One is the principle; so too, simply, of causes and things caused, and of all principles and things beginning, that which has stepped beyond all such things, and is posited in no coordination or relation, to speak according to reason—since the One by nature stands before the many and the simplest before the more complex—

But that there be many causes is impossible, because they lack conjunction and would go in a circle; one would not be the cause of another. Each, therefore, would be the cause of itself, but there would be no cause of the many. Since this cannot happen, the One must be the cause of the many, and it joins them. For a certain equable conspiracy—as it were—joins these (many) among themselves and binds them unitarily.
Monacensis manuscript in the margin: "The principle beyond all, unthinkable, inconceivable, not even properly called a principle, and the following." The same below: "The first is unknown and nameless."

1) Hamburg manuscript: "says" legei, but soon "assert" phaskoi.
2) Hamburg: "for him in the" men to tes. Soon Monacensis: "seems" eoike and "throes" odinas. The same in the margin: "the unrelated (free, absolute) are more honorable than those in relation."
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