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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
Plotinus Resources OnLine and in Print
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» Contents of this Ennead
This Part: 128 Pages
Page 71
17. But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this reasoning set it under limit?
And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number are in contradiction.
How, then, do we come to use the term? Is it that we think of Number as we think of an infinite line, not with the idea that any such lire exists but that even the very greatest — that of the [path of the] universe, for example — may be thought of as still greater? So it might be with number; let it be fixed, yet we still are free to think of its double, though not of course to produce the doubled quantity since it is impossible to join to the actual what is no more than a conception, a phantasm, private to ourselves.
It is our view that there does exist an infinite line, among the Intellectual Beings: for There a line would not be quantitative and being without quantity could be numerically infinite. This however would be in another mode than that of limitless extension. In what mode then? In that the conception of the Absolute Line does not include the conception of limit.
But what sort of thing is the Line in the Intellectual and what place does it hold?
It is later than Number since unity is observed in it; it rises at one point and traverses one course and simply lacks the quantity that would be the measure of the distance.
But where does this thing lie? Is it existent only in the defining thought, so to speak?
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-6b.asp?pg=71
