The principle that is superior to what is highest among beings, to
Intelligence (or intellect, or intelligible world) (may well be sought
after). There must indeed be some principle above Intelligence; for
intelligence does indeed aspire to become one, but it is not one,
possessing only the form of unity. Considered in itself, Intelligence
is not divided, but is genuinely present to itself. It does not
dismember itself because it is next to the One, though it dared to
withdraw therefrom. What is above Intelligence is Unity itself, an
incomprehensible miracle, of which it cannot even be said that it
is essence, lest we make of it the attribute of something else, and
to whom no name is really suitable. If however He must be named, we
may indeed call Him in general Unity, but only on the preliminary
understanding that He was not first something else, and then only
later became unity. That is why the One is so difficult to understand
in Himself; He is rather known by His offspring; that is, by Being,
because Intelligence leads up to Being. The nature of the One, indeed,
is the source of excellent things, the power which begets beings, while
remaining within Himself, without undergoing any diminution, without
passing into the beings to which He gives birth.[196] If we call this
principle Unity, it is only for the mutual convenience of rising to
some indivisible conception, and in unifying our soul. But when we say
that this principle is one and indivisible, it is not in the same sense
that we say it of the (geometric) point, and of the (arithmetical unity
called the) monad. What is one in the sense of the unity of the point
or the monad, is a principle of quantity, and would not exist unless
preceded by being and the principle which precedes even that being. It
is not of this kind of unity that we must think; still we believe that
the point and the monad have analogy with the One by their simplicity
as well as by the absence of all manifoldness and of all division.