Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods by Plotinus

Author:Plotinus [Plotinus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Plotinus
Published: 2013-06-13T04:00:00+00:00

2. QUANTITY.

4. The Aristotelians call quantity first "number," then "continuous size," "space," and "time."248 To these concepts they apply the other kinds of quantity; as for instance, they say that movement is a quantity measured by time.249 It might also be said reciprocally, that time receives its continuity from movement.

CONTINUOUS AND DEFINITE QUANTITY HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON.

If continuous quantity be quantity as far as it is continuous, then definite quantity will no longer be quantity. If, on the contrary, continuous quantity be quantity only accidentally, then there is nothing in common between continuous and definite quantity. We will grant that numbers are quantities, although if their nature of being quantities were plain, one would not see why they should be given that name. As to the line, the surface, and the body, they are called sizes and not quantities; and the latter name is given them only when they are estimated numerically; as when, for instance, they are measured by two or three feet.249 A body is a quantity only in so far as it is measured, just as space is a quantity only by accident, and not by its spatiality. We must here not consider what is quantity by accident, but by its quantitativeness, quantity itself. Three oxen are not a quantity; in this case, the quantity is the number found in them. Indeed, three oxen belong already to two categories. The case is similar with the line, and the surface, both of which possess such quantity. But if the quantity of surface be quantity itself, why would surface itself be a quantity? It is no doubt only when determined by three or four lines that the surface is called a quantity.

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