VI. 2. 21
(Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads)
(How Noûs is many as well as one: we find number in the infinite extent of its powers, quality in its glorious beauty, quantity in the continuity of its activity; and from these with the help of the great Categories of Sameness and Otherness (see VI. 2. 8) all the multiplicity of intelligible beings can be derived.)
How then does Noûs, remaining one in its essential structure, produce particular beings? This is the same as asking how from those four primary kinds (Motion, Rest, Sameness, and Otherness) the things which we call subsequent proceed. Well, then, see how in this great, this tremendous Noûs, not full of talk but full of thought, which is all things and a whole, not a particular individual mind, all things which come from it are present. It certainly has number in the things which it sees; it is one and many, and the many are its powers, wonderful powers, not weak, but because they are pure the greatest of powers, fresh and full of life and truly powers, without any limit to their action; so there we see the infinite, infinity and greatness. Then when you see existing in it in the way proper to Noûs this greatness, along with the beauty which there is in it of its essence and the glory and the light around it, you see quality already in bloom on it; and with the continuity of its activity you see extension, quietly at rest, appearing to your gaze. This gives you one, two, three things, extension and universal quantity being the third. And when you see quantity and quality in it, both tending to one and in a way becoming one, then observe figure appearing. Then otherness comes in and separates quantity and quality, and you have differences of figures and other qualities: and sameness, which is there as well, makes equality exist, otherness inequality in quantity, number, and size, and from these derive circles and squares and figures with unequal sides, and like and unlike numbers, odd and even. For since Noûs is intelligent life and activity without imperfection, it leaves out none of the things which we now find to be works of intelligence ; it contains all things in its power, possessing them as realities and in the manner proper to Noûs. Noûs possesses them as in thought, but not in discursive thought.