From this highest it is not sundered; it too is self-present: so close
to the unity, it cannot be articulated: and yet it is a principle
which in some measure has dared secession.

    That awesome Prior, The Unity, is not a being, for so its unity
would be vested in something else: strictly no name is apt to it,
but since name it we must there is a certain rough fitness in
designating it as unity with the understanding that it is not the
unity of some other thing.

    Thus it eludes our knowledge, so that the nearer approach to it is
through its offspring, Being: we know it as cause of existence to
Intellectual-Principle, as fount of all that is best, as the
efficacy which, self-perduring and undiminishing, generates all beings
and is not to be counted among these its derivatives, to all of
which it must be prior.

    This we can but name The Unity, indicating it to each other by a
designation that points to the concept of its partlessness while we
are in reality striving to bring our own minds to unity. We are not to
think of such unity and partlessness as belong to point or monad;
the veritable unity is the source of all such quantity which could not
exist unless first there existed Being and Being's Prior: we are
not, then, to think in the order of point and monad but to use
these- in their rejection of magnitude and partition- as symbols for
the higher concept.

    6. In what sense, then, do we assert this Unity, and how is it
to be adjusted to our mental processes?

    Its oneness must not be entitled to that of monad and point: for
these the mind abstracts extension and numerical quantity and rests
upon the very minutest possible, ending no doubt in the partless but
still in something that began as a partible and is always lodged in
something other than itself. The Unity was never in any other and
never belonged to the partible: nor is its impartibility that of
extreme minuteness; on the contrary it is great beyond anything, great
not in extension but in power, sizeless by its very greatness as
even its immediate sequents are impartible not in mass but in might.
We must therefore take the Unity as infinite not in measureless
extension or numerable quantity but in fathomless depths of power.

    Think of The One as Mind or as God, you think too meanly; use
all the resources of understanding to conceive this Unity and,
again, it is more authentically one than God, even though you reach
for God's unity beyond the unity the most perfect you can conceive.
For This is utterly a self-existent, with no concomitant whatever.
This self-sufficing is the essence of its unity. Something there
must be supremely adequate, autonomous, all-transcending, most utterly
without need.

    Any manifold, anything beneath The Unity, is dependent; combined
from various constituents, its essential nature goes in need of unity;
but unity cannot need itself; it stands unity accomplished. Again, a
manifold depends upon all its factors; and furthermore each of those
factors in turn- as necessarily inbound with the rest and not
self-standing- sets up a similar need both to its associates and to
the total so constituted.

    The sovranly self-sufficing principle will be Unity-Absolute, for
only in this Unity is there a nature above all need, whether within
itself or in regard to the rest of things. Unity seeks nothing towards
its being or its well-being or its safehold upon existence; cause to
all, how can it acquire its character outside of itself or know any
good outside? The good of its being can be no borrowing: This is The
Good. Nor has it station; it needs no standing ground as if inadequate
to its own sustaining; what calls for such underpropping is the
soulless, some material mass that must be based or fall. This is
base to all, cause of universal existence and of ordered station.
All that demands place is in need; a First cannot go in need of its
sequents: all need is effort towards a first principle; the First,
principle to all, must be utterly without need. If the Unity be
seeking, it must inevitably be seeking to be something other than
itself; it is seeking its own destroyer. Whatever may be said to be in
need of a good is needing a preserver; nothing can be a good to The
Unity, therefore.

    Neither can it have will to anything; it is a Beyond-Good, not
even to itself a good but to such beings only as may be of quality
to have part with it. Nor has it Intellection; that would comport
diversity: nor Movement; it is prior to Movement as to Intellection.

    To what could its Intellection be directed? To itself? But that
would imply a previous ignorance; it would be dependent upon that
Intellection in order to knowledge of itself; but it is the
self-sufficing. Yet this absence of self-knowing does not comport
ignorance; ignorance is of something outside- a knower ignorant of a
knowable- but in the Solitary there is neither knowing nor anything
unknown. Unity, self-present, it has no need of self-intellection:
indeed this "self-presence" were better left out, the more surely to
preserve the unity; we must eliminate all knowing and all association,
all intellection whether internal or external. It is not to be
though of as having but as being Intellection; Intellection does not
itself perform the intellective act but is the cause of the act in
something else, and cause is not to be identified with caused: most
assuredly the cause of all is not a thing within that all.

    This Principle is not, therefore, to be identified with the good
of which it is the source; it is good in the unique mode of being
The Good above all that is good.