Besides quantitativeness itself [the Absolute-Principle] does not possess quantity, which belongs only to things participating in it, a consideration which shows that Quantitativeness is an Idea-Principle. A white object becomes white by the presence of whiteness; what makes an organism white or of any other variety of colour is not itself a specific colour but, so to speak, a specific Reason-Principle: in the same way what gives an organism a certain bulk is not itself a thing of magnitude but is Magnitude itself, the abstract Absolute, or the Reason-Principle. Enneads II,4,
This Magnitude-Absolute, then, enters and beats the Matter out into Magnitude? Not at all: the Matter was not previously shrunken small: there was no littleness or bigness: the Idea gives Magnitude exactly as it gives every quality not previously present. Enneads II,4,
“But, given Magnitude and the properties we know, what else can be necessary to the existence of body?” Enneads II,4,
“A certain mass then; and if mass, then Magnitude? Obviously if your Base has no Magnitude it offers no footing to any entrant. And suppose it sizeless; then, what end does it serve? It never helped Idea or quality; now it ceases to account for differentiation or for magnitude, though the last, wheresoever it resides, seems to find its way into embodied entities by way of Matter.” Enneads II,4,
In other words, we have something which is to be described not as small or great but as the great-and-small: for it is at once a mass and a thing without magnitude, in the sense that it is the Matter on which Mass is based and that, as it changes from great to small and small to great, it traverses magnitude. Its very undeterminateness is a mass in the same sense that of being a recipient of Magnitude – though of course only in the visible object. Enneads II,4,
But these Ideas enter, not into Magnitude itself but into some subject that has been brought to Magnitude. For to suppose them entering into Magnitude and not into Matter – is to represent them as being either without Magnitude and without Real-Existence [and therefore undistinguishable from the Matter] or not Ideal-Forms [apt to body] but Reason-Principles [utterly removed] whose sphere could only be Soul; at this, there would be no such thing as body [i.e., instead of Ideal-Forms shaping Matter and so producing body, there would be merely Reason-Principles dwelling remote in Soul.] Enneads II,4,
The multiplicity here must be based upon some unity which, since it has been brought to Magnitude, must be, itself, distinct from Magnitude. Matter is the base of Identity to all that is composite: once each of the constituents comes bringing its own Matter with it, there is no need of any other base. No doubt there must be a container, as it were a place, to receive what is to enter, but Matter and even body precede place and space; the primal necessity, in order to the existence of body, is Matter. Enneads II,4,
Eliminate this Ideal-Form and the substratum ceases to be a thing of magnitude, or to appear so: the mass produced by the Idea was, let us suppose, a man or a horse; the horse-magnitude came upon the Matter when a horse was produced upon it; when the horse ceases to exist upon the Matter, the magnitude of the horse departs also. If we are told that the horse implies a certain determined bulk and that this bulk is a permanent thing, we answer that what is permanent in this case is not the magnitude of the horse but the magnitude of mass in general. That same Magnitude might be fire or earth; on their disappearance their particular magnitudes would disappear with them. Matter, then, can never take to itself either pattern or magnitude; if it did, it would no longer be able to turn from being fire, let us say, into being something else; it would become and be fire once for all. Enneads III,6,
That a thing essentially devoid of magnitude should come to a certain size is no more astonishing than that a thing essentially devoid of heat should become warm: Matter’s essential existence is quite separate from its existing in bulk, since, of course, magnitude is an immaterial principle as pattern is. Besides, if we are not to reduce Matter to nothing, it must be all things by way of participation, and Magnitude is one of those all things. Enneads III,6,
In bodies, necessarily compounds, Magnitude though not a determined Magnitude must be present as one of the constituents; it is implied in the very notion of body; but Matter – not a Body – excludes even undetermined Magnitude. Enneads III,6,
Nor can we, on the other hand, think that matter is simply Absolute Magnitude. Enneads III,6,
Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle; it is an Ideal-Principle: it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some definite Mass. The fact is that the self-gathered content of the Intellectual Principle or of the All-Soul, desires expansion [and thereby engenders secondaries]: in its images – aspiring and moving towards it and eagerly imitating its act – is vested a similar power of reproducing their states in their own derivatives. The Magnitude latent in the expansive tendency of the Image-making phase [of Intellect or All-Soul] runs forth into the Absolute Magnitude of the Universe; this in turn enlists into the process the spurious magnitude of Matter: the content of the Supreme, thus, in virtue of its own prior extension enables Matter – which never possesses a content – to exhibit the appearance of Magnitude. It must be understood that spurious Magnitude consists in the fact that a thing [Matter] not possessing actual Magnitude strains towards it and has the extension of that straining. All that is Real Being gives forth a reflection of itself upon all else; every Reality, therefore, has Magnitude which by this process is communicated to the Universe. Enneads III,6,
The Magnitude inherent in each Ideal-Principle – that of a horse or of anything else – combines with Magnitude the Absolute with the result that, irradiated by that Absolute, Matter entire takes Magnitude and every particle of it becomes a mass; in this way, by virtue at once of the totality of Idea with its inherent magnitude and of each several specific Idea, all things appear under mass; Matter takes on what we conceive as extension; it is compelled to assume a relation to the All and, gathered under this Idea and under Mass, to be all things – in the degree in which the operating power can lead the really nothing to become all. Enneads III,6,
By the conditions of Manifestation, colour rises from non-colour [= from the colourless prototype of colour in the Ideal Realm]. Quality, known by the one name with its parallel in the sphere of Primals, rises, similarly, from non-quality: in precisely the same mode, the Magnitude appearing upon Matter rises from non-Magnitude or from that Primal which is known to us by the same name; so that material things become visible through standing midway between bare underlie and Pure Idea. All is perceptible by virtue of this origin in the Intellectual Sphere but all is falsity since the base in which the manifestation takes place is a non-existent. Enneads III,6,
Particular entities thus attain their Magnitude through being drawn out by the power of the Existents which mirror themselves and make space for themselves in them. And no violence is required to draw them into all the diversity of Shapes and Kinds because the phenomenal All exists by Matter [by Matter’s essential all-receptivity] and because each several Idea, moreover, draws Matter its own way by the power stored within itself, the power it holds from the Intellectual Realm. Matter is manifested in this sphere as Mass by the fact that it mirrors the Absolute Magnitude; Magnitude here is the reflection in the mirror. The Ideas meet all of necessity in Matter [the Ultimate of the emanatory progress]: and Matter, both as one total thing and in its entire scope, must submit itself, since it is the Material of the entire Here, not of any one determined thing: what is, in its own character, no determined thing may become determined by an outside force – though, in becoming thus determined, it does not become the definite thing in question, for thus it would lose its own characteristic indetermination. Enneads III,6,
The Ideal Principle possessing the Intellection [= Idea, Noesis] of Magnitude – assuming that this Intellection is of such power as not merely to subsist within itself but to be urged outward as it were by the intensity of its life – will necessarily realize itself in a Kind [= Matter] not having its being in the Intellective Principle, not previously possessing the Idea of Magnitude or any trace of that Idea or any other. Enneads III,6,
No: this Principle comes from the source of Magnitude [= is primal “Magnitude”] and therefore Matter can have no extension, in which to harbour the Magnitude of the Principle, but can take in only its reflected appearance. Enneads III,6,
To the thing which does not enjoy Magnitude in the sense of having mass-extension in its own substance and parts, the only possibility is that it present some partial semblance of Magnitude, such as being continuous, not here and there and everywhere, that its parts be related within it and ungapped. An adequate reflection of a great mass cannot be produced in a small space – mere size prevents – but the greater, pursuing the hope of that full self-presentment, makes progress towards it and brings about a nearer approach to adequate mirroring in the parallel from which it can never withhold its radiation: thus it confers Magnitude upon that [= Matter] which has none and cannot even muster up the appearance of having any, and the visible resultant exhibits the Magnitude of mass. Enneads III,6,
Matter, then, wears Magnitude as a dress thrown about it by its association with that Absolute Magnitude to whose movement it must answer; but it does not, for that, change its Kind; if the Idea which has clothed it were to withdraw, it would once again be what it permanently is, what it is by its own strength, or it would have precisely the Magnitude lent to it by any other form that happens to be present in it. Enneads III,6,
Succession or repetition gives us Number – dyad, triad, etc. – and the extent traversed is a matter of Magnitude; thus we have Quantity of Movement – in the form of number, dyad, triad, decade, or in the form of extent apprehended in what we may call the amount of the Movement: but, the idea of Time we have not. That definite Quantity is merely something occurring within Time, for, otherwise Time is not everywhere but is something belonging to Movement which thus would be its substratum or basic-stuff: once more, then, we would be making Time identical with Movement; for the extent of Movement is not something outside it but is simply its continuousness, and we need not halt upon the difference between the momentary and the continuous, which is simply one of manner and degree. The extended movement and its extent are not Time; they are in Time. Those that explain Time as extent of Movement must mean not the extent of the movement itself but something which determines its extension, something with which the movement keeps pace in its course. But what this something is, we are not told; yet it is, clearly, Time, that in which all Movement proceeds. This is what our discussion has aimed at from the first: “What, essentially, is Time?” It comes to this: we ask “What is Time?” and we are answered, “Time is the extension of Movement in Time!” Enneads III,7,
And suppose it to be true that the Soul is the appraiser, using Magnitude as the measuring standard, how does this help us to the conception of Time? Enneads III,7,
We are no nearer knowledge than if we said that the foot-rule measures Magnitude while we left the concept Magnitude undefined; or, again, we might as well define Movement – whose limitlessness puts it out of our reach – as the thing measured by Space; the definition would be parallel since we can mark off a certain space which the Movement has traversed and say the one is equivalent to the other. Enneads III,7,
We inevitably conclude that Mass or Extension cannot be ranked as the first of things; Non-Extension and Unity must be prior. We must begin with the One and conclude with the Many, proceed to magnitude from that which is free from magnitude: a One is necessary to the existence of a Many, Non-Magnitude to that of Magnitude. Magnitude is a unity not by being Unity-Absolute, but by participation and in an accidental mode: there must be a primary and absolute preceding the accidental, or the accidental relation is left unexplained. Enneads: VI I
Magnitude [extended quantity] is in a still higher degree posterior and composite, for it contains within itself number, line and surface. Now if continuous magnitude derives its quantity from number, and number is not a genus, how can magnitude hold that status? Besides, magnitudes, like numbers, admit of priority and posteriority. Enneads VI,2,
As we survey this Magnitude with the beauty of Being within it and the glory and light around it, all contained in Intellect, we see, simultaneously, Quality already in bloom, and along with the continuity of its Act we catch a glimpse of Magnitude at Rest. Then, with one, two and three in Intellect, Magnitude appears as of three dimensions, with Quantity entire. Quantity thus given and Quality, both merging into one and, we may almost say, becoming one, there is at once shape. Difference slips in to divide both Quantity and Quality, and so we have variations in shape and differences of Quality. Identity, coming in with Difference, creates equality, Difference meanwhile introducing into Quantity inequality, whether in number or in magnitude: thus are produced circles and squares, and irregular figures, with number like and unlike, odd and even. Enneads VI,2,
Yet the universe has at once extension and beauty? Yes; because it has not been allowed to slip away into the limitless but is held fast by unity; and it has beauty in virtue of Beauty not of Magnitude; it needed Beauty to parry that magnitude; in the degree of its extension it was void of beauty and to that degree ugly. Thus extension serves as Matter to Beauty since what calls for its ordering is a multiplicity. The greater the expansion, the greater the disorder and ugliness. Enneads VI,6,
You see something which you pronounce to be a unity; that thing possesses also size, form, and a host of other characteristics you might name; size, bulk, sweetness, bitterness and other Ideas are actually present in the thing; it surely cannot be thought that, while every conceivable quality has Real-Being, quantity [Number] has not and that while continuous quantity exists, discrete quantity does not and this though continuous quantity is measured by the discrete. No: as size by the presence of Magnitude, and Oneness by the presence of Unity, so with Duality and all the other numerical modes. Enneads VI,6,