Problems Concerning First Principles

and the most comprehensive of the things contained within; but if you wish to call it beyond every opposition 3, and beyond such opposition, not only that which is among things of the same rank, but also that which is as the first and after the first.

Chapter 4.

Furthermore, the One and the unified and the many distinguished from these are "All." For as many as the things distinguished are, so many is the unified from which it is distinguished; and as many as the many are, so many is the one from which it unfolds. Yet it is none the less one, if not even more so, because the many are after it and not in it; and it is unified because it is a collection of the things distinguished before the distinction. Therefore, whether according to coordination or according to their own nature, both are "All." But "All" cannot be the first, nor the principle. If it is according to coordination, then because the final things are with them; if it is only the one of them, then because both one and all are together according to the one—(but we have not yet found that which is utterly beyond all things)—and because the one is the summit of the many, as the cause of those things from it. In addition to these, we conceive of the one according to the purified suspicion toward the simplest and most comprehensive. But the most venerable must be ungraspable by all concepts and suspicions; since even in things here, that which always flees toward the upper regions from our concepts is more honorable than that which is more readily available, so that the most honorable would be that which has escaped all our suspicions. If this "nothing" exists, let the "nothing" be twofold: one is better than the one, the other is on this side. If we are walking on air in saying these things, the "walking on air" is also twofold: the one falling into the ineffable, the other into that which in no way, in no manner, exists. For this, too, is ineffable, as Plato says, but according to the worse aspect; that one, however, according to the better.

3) Hamburg manuscript places "every" pases twice. The summary of this chapter turns on the fact that one should not stop at the One, but as much as possible, one must penetrate to that which is absolute, perfect, and total on all sides, hanging only from itself, toward which the soul, urged by a silent care, desires to be carried.
1) Monacensis: "distinguished" diakrinomena.
2) Monacensis: "and" kai is more correctly omitted.
3) Monacensis: "the final" eschata ta and soon "in it" auto m.
4) Monacensis more correctly: "for us" hemin.