esimal division is never
arrested by the one. Thus all being is one at a distance, and broken
up when near, and like at a distance and unlike when near; and also the
particles which compose being seem to be like and unlike, in rest and
motion, in generation and corruption, in contact and separation, if one
is not.

2.bb. Once more, let us inquire, If the one is not, and the others of
the one are, what follows? In the first place, the others will not be
the one, nor the many, for in that case the one would be contained in
them; neither will they appear to be one or many; because they have no
communion or participation in that which is not, nor semblance of that
which is not. If one is not, the others neither are, nor appear to be
one or many, like or unlike, in contact or separation. In short, if one
is not, nothing is.

The result of all which is, that whether one is or is not, one and the
others, in relation to themselves and to one another, are and are not,
and appear to be and appear not to be, in all manner of ways.

I. On the first hypothesis we may remark: first, That one is one is
an identical proposition, from which we might expect that no further
consequences could be deduced. The train of consequences which follows,
is inferred by altering the predicate into 'not many.' Yet, perhaps, if
a strict Eristic had been present, oios aner ei kai nun paren, he might
have affirmed that the not many presented a different aspect of the
conception from the one, and was therefore not identical with it. Such
a subtlety would be very much in character with the Zenonian dialectic.
Secondly, We may note, that the conclusion is really involved in the
premises. For one is conceived as one, in a sense which excludes all
predicates. When the meaning of one has been reduced to a point, there
is no use in saying that it has neither parts nor magnitude. Thirdly,
The conception of the same is, first of all, identified with the one;
and then by a further analysis distinguished from, and even opposed to
it. Fourthly, We may detect notions, which have reappeared in modern
philosophy, e.g. the bare abstraction of undefined unity, answering to
the Hegelian 'Seyn,' or the identity of contradictions 'that which is
older is also younger,' etc., or the Kantian conception of an a priori
synthetical proposition 'one is.'

II. In the first series of propositions the word 'is' is really the
copula; in the second, the verb of existence. As in th