Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, Volume 1

That is why these things are linked by their nature, as intimately as possible, one with the other; they are unified under a certain indistinct mode; lives distinguish themselves more and are, to one another, in the relation of parts to the whole; numbers and reasons are distinguished in a complete and fixed way, in their independent circumscriptions. This is why it is easier to recognize that there are several reasons after the one reason and issued from the one reason; whereas it is not as easy to understand that there are several independent lives before the reasons, and even less so that there are several substances, because of their very strong union which resembles that of the elements. And yet, if this is not evident, it is necessary to recognize that there are several lives and several substances, since the substance is an elemented thing and a mixture of elements, that the life according to distinction consists of all and of parts, and finally that the reason is a species formed of species. Each thing is therefore one and many; all internal plurality, as we have said, is generative of external plurality. It is thus necessary that after the one substance, the plurality of substances proceeds according to any one of the several elements that dominates each of them by specifying it, and that after the one life, the plurality of lives flows out, differentiated from one another according to whether they are dominated by a particular property different from the parts, just as after the one reason, the plurality of reasons proceeds, each dominated by some species different from the several species. For always the internal plurality is generative of the external plurality; or, to speak better, the whole generates the whole—the second whole—the parts existing by themselves generate the parts in the second, and the whole according to the individual of the parts generates a certain more particular whole. And it is the same for the elemented and the elements, for the monad and all the numbers; for the monad generates the monadic aspect of each number, and the plurality in the monad generates the plurality in all things.