I.2.1. Quantity

Quantity is Being-for-Self transcended; the repelling One, which (as we saw) remains merely negative towards the excluded One, has passed over into relation to it, and, becoming identical with Other, has lost its determination; Being-for-Self has passed over into Attraction. The absolute brittleness of the repelling One has melted down into this unity; and this, since it contains this One and also is determined by the immanent Repulsion, is unity with itself as being unity with Being-beyond-self. Attraction thus is the moment of continuity in Quantity.

Continuity thus is simple and self-identical self-relation, interrupted by no limit or exclusion; not, however, an immediate unity, but a unity of the Ones which are for themselves. The externality of plurality is here still contained, but as something undifferentiated and uninterrupted. In continuity, plurality is posited as it is in itself; each of the many is what the others are, each is equal to the other, and hence plurality is simple and undifferentiated equality. Continuity is this moment of the self-identity of Being-external-to-one-another, the self-prolongation of different Ones into other and distinct Ones.

Thus Magnitude in continuity has the moment of discreteness immediately—Repulsion, which now in Quantity is bare moment.—Stability is self-identity, self-identity of the many which do not become exclusive; it is only Repulsion which expands self-identity into continuity. And thus on its side discreteness is coalescent discreteness, where the Ones are related not to the void (or negative) but to their own stability, and do not, in the Many, interrupt this self-identity.

Quantity is the unity of these moments, of continuity and discreteness; but at the outset it is so in the form of one of them, G* namely of continuity; and this is the result of the dialectic of Being-for-Self, which has collapsed into the form of self-identical immediacy. Quantity as such is just this simple result, in so far as its moments are not yet developed, nor posited in it.—At present, posited as Being-for-self as it truly is, it only contains them. It was determined as self-transcendent self-relation, a perennial egress beyond itself. But that which it repels is itself; and thus Repulsion is its own creative onward flow. Because of this identity with that which is repulsed, this discreteness is an uninterrupted continuity; and because it passes beyond itself, this continuity, without being interrupted, is at the same time plurality, which equally immediately remains in its identity with itself.

Pure Quantity as yet has no limit, or in other words is not yet Quantum; and even in so far as it becomes Quantum, limit does not bar it in; it rather consists in the fact that limit does not bar it in, and that it contains Being-for-Self as transcended. Discreteness is moment in it, which may be expressed by saying that Quantity always and everywhere is the real potentiality of One, but that also conversely One is equally absolutely continuous.

Imagination operating without concept easily changes Continuity into Combination, that is, into an external relation of the Ones to one another, the One remaining in its absolute and brittle exclusiveness. But we saw when examining the One that, in its own true nature, it passes over into its ideality, which is Attraction, and that thus continuity is not external but peculiar to it, and founded in its essence. It is this externality of continuity for the One in which atomism remains entangled; it is this which imagination finds it so hard to leave.—On the other hand, mathematics rejects a metaphysic which should be content to allow time to consist of points of time, space in general (or, as a first step, the line) of points in space, the plane, of lines, and the whole of space, of planes; it allows no validity to such discontinuous Ones. And although it determines, for instance, the magnitude of a plane as consisting of the sum of an infinity of lines, yet this discreteness is taken only as a momentary image; and the infinite plurality of lines implies, since the space which they are meant to constitute is after all limited, that their discreteness has already been transcended.

It is the concept of pure Quantity as opposed to the mere image of it that Spinoza (to whom it was of especial importance) has in mind when he speaks of Quantity as follows (Eth. P. I. Prop. XV, Schol.)

Quantitas duobus modis a nobis concipitur, abstracte scilicet sive superficialiter, prout nempe ipsam imaginamur; vel ut substantia, quod a solo intellectu fit. Si itaque ad quantitatem attendimus, prout in imaginatione est, quod saepe et facilius a nobis fit, reperietur finita, divisibilis, et ex partibus conflata, si autem ad ipsam, prout in intellectu est, attendimus, et eam, quatenus substantia est, concipimus, quod difficillime fit,—infinita, unica, et indivisibilis reperietur. Quod omnibus, qui inter imaginationem et intellectum distinguere sciverint, satis manifestum erit.

Should more definite examples of pure Quantity be demanded, Space and Time, Matter in general, Light, and so forth, the Ego itself, will furnish them; only by Quantity we must not understand (as was remarked above) Quantum. Space, Time, and so on, are expansions or pluralities where egress beyond self, and a constant flow, take place; though what is reached is not the opposite (Quality, or the One), but, passing beyond themselves, they are engaged upon a perpetual self-production of their unity.

Space is such an absolute being-beyond-self; it is also absolutely uninterrupted, a still-repeated otherness which is identical with itself; and Time is an absolute passing-beyond-self, a creation of the One (the point of time or Now), which immediately becomes the annihilation of it, and also the perpetual annihilation of this destruction: so that this self-creation of Not-being is also simple self-equality and self-identity.—As regards Matter as Quantity, among the seven Prepositions surviving of the first dissertation of Leibniz there is one (the second) which deals with this (left-hand page of Part One of his works); it runs thus: Non omnino improbabile est, materiam et quantitatem esse realiter idem.—And, indeed, there is no difference between these concepts, save that Quantity is a pure determination of thought, while Matter is the same as existing externally.—The Ego, too, is determined as pure Quantity, since it is an absolute alienation, an infinite removal or universal repulsion towards the negative freedom of Being-for-Self, though it remains absolutely simple continuity—the continuity of universality or Being-with-Self, which is not interrupted by the infinite variety of limits, the content of sensations, intuitions, and so forth.—Those who refuse to take plurality as simple unity, and want an image of this unity, apart from the concept (namely, that each of the Many is the same as every other, that is, One of the Many,—since we are not here speaking of many further determined, of green, red, and so on, but of the Many considered in itself), will find plenty of examples among those static existences which offer as present the deduced concept of Quantity in simple intuition.

It is the nature of Quantity to be this simple unity of Discreteness and Continuity’; and to this appertains the conflict or Antinomy of the infinite divisibility of Space, of Time, of Matter, and so on.

This antinomy consists solely in the necessity of asserting Discreteness as much as Continuity. The one-sided assertion of Discreteness gives an infinite or absolute division (and thus something indivisible) for principle; and the one-sided assertion of Continuity, infinite divisibility.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason sets up, as is well known, four (cosmological) Antinomies, the second of which deals with the opposition which is constituted by the moments of Quantity.

These Kantian antinomies still remain an important part of the critical philosophy; they, principally, effected the fall of the previous metaphysics, and may be looked on as a chief transition to modern philosophy; for they in particular assisted to produce a conviction of the invalidity of the categories of finitude by examining their content;—and this is a more correct method than that formal method of a subjective idealism according to which their only fault is supposed to be that they are subjective, and not that which they are in themselves. But, great as are its merits, this exposition is very incomplete, being in part self-hampered and cross-grained, and in part faulty in view of its result which assumes that cognition has no other form of thought than finite categories.—In both respects these antinomies deserve a more exact criticism, as well investigating their standpoint and method more closely as liberating the main and essential point from the useless mould into which it has been forced.

First I remark that Kant tried to give an appearance of completeness to his four cosmological antinomies by his method of classification, which he borrowed from his scheme of categories. A deeper insight into the antinomous or, rather, into the dialectic nature of Reason shows, however, that every concept is a unity of opposite moments, which could therefore be asserted in the shape of an antinomy. Thus, Becoming, Determinate Being, and so on, and other concepts, could each furnish its particular antinomy, and as many antinomies could be set up as concepts were yielded.—The old scepticism did not shrink from the labour of demonstrating this contradiction or antinomy in every concept which it found in the sciences.

Next, Kant took the antinomy not in the concepts themselves, but in the already concrete form of cosmological determinations. In order to have a pure antinomy which might be dealt with in its simple concept, it was necessary not to take the determinations of thought in their application to and admixture with the ideas of World, Space, Time, Matter, and so on, but to consider them purely for themselves without this concrete material, which here has no force nor avail; for these determinations alone constitute the essence and base of the antinomies.

Kant offers this concept of the antinomies, that they are no tricks of sophistry, but contradictions which Reason must necessarily hit on (as Kant puts it): a view which is important.—“The natural appearance of the antinomies no longer actively deludes Reason when it perceives its base; yet still Reason is deceived by it.”—Naturally; for the critical solution by means of the so-called transcendental ideality of the world of perception has no other result than this, that it makes the so-called conflict into something subjective; and there, of course, it remains appearance, that is, it remains unresolved, as much as before. The true solution can only be this, that two determinations, being contradictory, and yet necessary to the same concept, cannot be valid each by itself in its one-sidedness, but have their truth only in their transcendence, in the unity of their concept.

More closely considered, the Kantian antinomies contain no more than the simple categorical assertion of each one of the two opposed moments of a determination, apart from the other. But while this is done, the simple categorical or rather assertorical statement is enveloped in a scaffolding of reasoning, awry and crooked, intended to produce a show of proofs and to hide and disguise its merely assertorical character. This will become clear on closer examination.

The antinomy proper to this place is that of the so-called infinite divisibility of matter, and is based on the opposition between the moments of continuity and discreteness contained in the concept of Quantity.

In Kant’s exposition the Thesis is as follows:—

“Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists everywhere nothing but what is simple or is composed of simple parts.”

Here to the simple, the atom, is opposed the composite, which as compared with the static or continuous is a rudimentary determination.—The substratum given to these abstractions (namely, substances in the world) means no more than things as perceived by the senses, and is irrelevant to the antinomy; Space or Time might equally well have been taken.—Since now the thesis deals only with compositeness instead of continuity, it is really an analytical or tautological proposition. That the composite is not One in itself, but is only something put together externally and consisting of Other, is its immediate determination. But the Other of the composite is the simple. It is therefore a tautology to say that the composite consists of the simple.—If it is asked of what something consists, it is demanded that something other be indicated, the compounding of which constitutes this something. If ink is to be made up just of ink, then the meaning of the question which asks of what other bodies it consists is missed and, not being answered, merely repeats itself. It is then a further question whether the object of enquiry is to consist of something or not. But the composite is just that which is supposed to be a conglomeration and to consist of others.—If the simple (which is allowed to be Other to the composite) is taken as merely relatively simple, but again composite in itself, then the question still remains. Imagination has before it only this or that concrete composite, of which this or that Something might be indicated as its simple unit, though composite in itself. But here we are speaking of the composite as such.

As regards Kant’s proof of the Thesis, it—like all Kant’s proofs of the remaining antinomous propositions—makes the detour (which will prove highly superfluous) of being apagogic.

“Assume” (he begins) “that the composite substances do not consist of simple parts; then, if all composition were mentally removed, there would be no composite part; now we have assumed that there are no simple parts; there is therefore no simple part—and hence nothing at all—left; hence no substance is given us.”—

This conclusion is quite correct: if there is only composite and we imagine everything composite removed, then nothing remains; we may grant this, but this tautological superfluity might be spared, and the proof might begin with what follows, namely:—

“Either all composition cannot be mentally removed, or, it being removed, something subsisting without composition—namely, the simple—must remain.”

“But in the first case again the composite would not consist of substances (for with these compositeness is only a contingent relation of the substances, and they must be capable of existing as persistent beings without it).—But this case is contradictory to the hypothesis, and therefore only the second remains: namely, that all composite substance consists of simple parts.”

The reason which is the main point, compared with which all that has been said is quite superfluous, is relegated to a parenthesis. The dilemma is this:—That which persists is either the composite or else the simple. If the first (the composite) were that which persists, then that which persists is not the substances, for in these compositeness is a contingent relation; but the substances are that which persists, therefore that which persists is the simple.

It is evident that the apagogic detour might be avoided, and that to the Thesis (“Composite substance consists of simple parts”) this reason might immediately be added as proof, namely that compositeness is merely a contingent relation of the substances, external to and not concerned with them.—If compositeness is in truth contingent, then the essence is of course the simple. But this contingency, which is the sole point at issue, is not proved but simply assumed (in parenthesis) as though it were obvious or beside the point. It is, of course, self-evident that compositeness is the determination of contingency and externality; but, if we were only about to deal with a contingent juxtaposition instead of continuity, it was not worth while to set up an antinomy about it, or, rather, it was impossible; in that case it is mere tautology (as was said) to assert that the parts are simple.

Thus in the apagogic detour we see that the very assertion which is to be its result already occurs. Thus the proof might more briefly be put as follows:—

Let it be assumed that substances do not consist of simple parts, but are composite. Now all composition can be thought away (since it is a merely contingent relation); it being removed, therefore, no substances remain unless they consist of simple parts. But we must have substances, since we assumed their existence; everything must not vanish, something must remain; for we have presupposed that some such persistent entity (which we called substance) exists. Therefore this something must be simple.

To complete matters, we must consider the conclusion, which runs as follows:—

“Hence it follows immediately that all the things in the world are simple essences, that compositeness is a condition merely external to them, and that reason must consider the elementary substances to be simple essences.”

Here the external, that is, the contingent, nature of compositeness is cited as a consequence, after having already been introduced parenthetically and used in the proof.

Kant protests much that he is not looking for sophisms in the conflicting propositions of the antinomy, in order to effect (as the phrase is) an advocate’s proof. Indeed, this proof is not really to be accused of sophistry so much as of a forced and useless tortuosity, which serves only to produce the outer form of a proof, not allowing it to be perfectly transparent that that which should stand out as conclusion is the (parenthetic) hinge of the proof, and that there is no proof but only an assumption.

The Antithesis is as follows:—

“No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts, and nothing simple anywhere exists in it.”

The proof again has the apagogic turn, and in another manner is as faulty as the previous.

“Assume,” it runs, “that a composite thing as substance consists of simple parts. Now all external relation (and therefore also the composition of substances) is possible only in space, and therefore the space which it occupies must consist of as many parts as those of which the composite thing consists. Now space does not consist of simple parts, but of spaces. Therefore each part of the composite thing must occupy one space.”

“But the absolutely first parts of every composite thing are simple.”

“Hence the simple thing occupies a space.”

“Now every reality which occupies a space comprehends a manifold of mutual externalities; it is therefore composed (of substances), and thus the simple would be a substantial composite, which is self-contradictory.”

This proof may be called a perfect nest (to use an expression which is elsewhere employed by Kant) of faulty procedure.

First, the apagogic turn is a baseless fabric. The assumption that whatever is substantial is spatial, while space does not consist of simple parts, is a direct assertion which is made the immediate foundation of that which is to be proved; after this there is no need for further proof.

Next, this apagogic proof begins with the proposition “that all composition of substances is an external relation,” but, strangely enough, immediately forgets it. For the further conclusion is made that composition can take place only in space, that space does not consist of simple parts, and that therefore the reality occupying a space is composite. If once compositeness has been taken as an external relation, then spatiality itself (since composition is supposed to be possible in it alone) is for that very reason a relation external to the substances, which does not concern them nor touch their nature any more than does all the rest that can be inferred from the determination of spatiality. For this very reason the substances should not be placed in space.

Further, it is assumed that the space into which the substances are here transplanted does not consist of simple parts; since it is an intuition (that is, according to Kant’s determination, a sensuous representation) which can be given only by one single object, and is not a so-called discursive concept.—This distinction of Kant’s between intuition and concept has, of course, led to the abuse of the former, and, in order to save the labour of achieving the latter, its value and sphere have been extended to all cognition. What is relevant here is this, that space, like intuition itself, must be conceived if we would have any concept at all. And thus the question would arise whether space, though simple continuity for intuition, might not conceptually have to be taken as composed of simple parts, since otherwise space would be affected by that same antinomy into which substance only was transplanted. Indeed, if the antinomy is taken in the abstract, it extends to all Quantity (as was said above) and therefore also to Space and Time.

Now in the proof it is assumed that space does not consist of simple parts; and this should have been sufficient reason for not transplanting the simple into this element, which is inadequate to the determination of the simple.—Here also the continuity of space comes into collision with compositeness; these two are confused, and the former is inserted in the place of the latter (which results in a Quaternio terminorum in the conclusion). Kant expressly determines space as being one, its parts being based only on limitations, so that they do not precede space, sole and all-comprehending, as its component parts from which it could be put together. (Critique of Pure Reason, Second Ed., p. 39.) Here continuity is predicated of space, very justly and definitely, in opposition to its compositeness out of parts. In the proof, on the other hand, the transplanting of the substances into space is to involve “a manifold of mutual externalities,” which, further, is “therefore composite.” Yet we have quoted what shows that the manner in which a manifold exists in space is expressly designed to exclude compositeness and parts which precede its unity.

In the Note to the proof of the Antithesis, the other fundamental notion of the critical philosophy is further expressly adduced, namely, that we have a concept of bodies only as phenomena, which, as such, necessarily presuppose space as the condition of the possibility of all external manifestation. If by substances mere bodies are meant, such as are seen, felt, tasted, and so forth, then there is really no question of their conceptual meaning: sense-perception only is in question. The proof of the Antithesis might then be put in brief thus:—All visual, sensory, and other experience shows us only what is composite; the best microscopes and the keenest knives have never yet allowed us to hit on anything simple. Therefore Reason, too, should not want to hit on anything simple.

And thus when now we regard more closely this opposition of Thesis and Antithesis, liberating their proofs of all idle superfluity and tortuousness, we find that the proof of the Antithesis, by transplanting the substances into space, contains a dogmatic assumption of Continuity, and that the proof of the Thesis, by assuming Compositeness as the class of relation subsistent between the substances, contains the dogmatic assumption of the contingency of this relation—that is, the assumption that the substances are absolute Ones. Thus the whole antinomy reduces itself to the separation and direct assertion of the two moments of Quantity as being absolutely separate. Looked at from the point of view of mere discreteness, substance, matter, space and time, and so on, are absolutely divided, and the One is their principle. From the point of view of continuity, this One is merely suspended: division remains divisibility, the possibility of dividing remains as possibility, without ever actually reaching the atom. Now even if we do not move beyond the determination implied in what has been said about these contradictions, still continuity itself contains the moment of the atom, since continuity exists simply as the possibility of division; just as accomplished division, or discreteness, cancels all distinction between the Ones—for each simple One is what every other is,—and for that very reason contains their equality and therefore their continuity. Each of the two opposed sides contains its other in itself, and neither can be thought of without the other; and thus it follows that, taken alone, neither determination has truth, but only their unity. This is the true dialectic consideration of them, and the true result.

The dialectic examples of the old Eleatic school, especially those which deal with motion, are incomparably deeper and richer in meaning than the antinomy of Kant which we have considered. They, too, are based on the concept of Quantity, and in it have their solution. To consider them here would lead too far; they concern the concepts of Space and Time, and can be dealt with in connexion with these subjects and with the history of philosophy.—They do the highest honour to the reason of their inventors; their result is the pure Being of Parmenides, since they demonstrate the solution into itself of all determinate being: in themselves, therefore, they are the Flux of Herakleitos. They therefore deserve a fuller consideration than the ordinary explanation that they are just sophisms;—an assertion which clings to empirical perception, following that method of Diogenes (so convincing to common sense), who, when a dialectician demonstrated the contradiction contained in motion, is said to have put no further strain on his reason, but, by mutely walking up and down, to have referred to the evidence of the eyes;—an assertion and a refutation which of course it is easier to make than to enter upon thought, to seize the confusions into which thought, quite unforced, leads when it formulates itself in ordinary consciousness, and to solve them by means of thought.

The solution of these dialectic formations which Aristotle effects is highly to be praised: it is implied in his truly speculative concepts of Space, Time, and Motion. Infinite divisibility (which, being imagined as actually completed, is equivalent to infinite division, or the atoms), as being the principle on which are based the most famous of these proofs, is by him opposed to Continuity (of Time as well as of Space), in such a manner that infinite—that is, abstract—plurality is contained in continuity only in itself, or potentially. The actual, as opposed to abstract plurality (or to abstract continuity), is their concrete form, it is* Time and Space itself; and these in turn are opposed to Motion and Matter. The abstract exists only in itself, or potentially; it exists only as a moment of the Real. Bayle in his Dictionnaire (Article, Zenon) considers Aristotle’s solution of Zeno’s dialectic “pitoyable”: he does not understand the meaning of the potentially infinite divisibility of matter. He replies that if matter is infinitely divisible, it actually contains an infinite number of parts, so that this is not an infinite en puissance but an infinite really and actually existing.—No: divisibility itself is only a potentiality, not an existence of parts; and in any case, in Continuity, plurality is posited only as a moment already transcended.—Keen understanding—though in this, too, probably Aristotle has not been excelled—is not sufficient to seize and judge his speculative concepts; nor is the clumsy method of sensuous representation which we cited sufficient to refute such arguments as Zeno used. Such an understanding makes the mistake of taking these objects of thought or abstraction, such as an infinite number of parts, for Something, for true and actual; and this sensuous consciousness will never let itself be raised from the sphere of the empirical to that of Thought.

Kant’s solution of the antinomy, too, consists only in demanding that Reason must not rise above sense-perception, but must take the phenomenon as it is. This solution leaves on one side the content of the antinomy; it does not reach the nature of the concept of its determinations, each of which, isolated by itself, is null, being no more than a transition to its Other, while Quantity is their unity and therefore their truth.

1. Quantity contains the two moments of Continuity and Discreteness. Each is its determination, and it must therefore be posited in each.—Primarily it is their immediate unity, that is, primarily it is posited only in one of its determinations, namely, continuity; and thus is Continuous Magnitude.

Or again, continuity is one of the moments of Quantity which requires the other moment, discreteness, to complete it. But still Quantity is concrete unity only in so far as it is the unity of distinct moments. The moments therefore must be taken as distinct, but must not be resolved back into Attraction and Repulsion; they must be taken in their truth, as each forming the whole in its unity with the other. Continuity is only coherent and homogeneous unity as unity of discrete elements, and, posited thus, it is no longer mere moment but complete Quantity: this is Continuous Magnitude.

2. Immediate quantity is Continuous Magnitude. But in fact Quantity is not immediate; immediacy is a determinateness, and Quantity itself is this immediacy transcended. It must therefore be posited in the determinateness immanent in it, and this is the One. Quantity is Discrete Magnitude.

Discreteness, like continuity, is a moment of Quantity, but is also the whole of Quantity just because it is a moment of this whole, and thus, as distinct from it, does not relinquish its unity with the other moment.—Quantity is externality in itself, and Continuous Magnitude is this externality as propagating itself without negation, as a context which remains at one in itself. Discrete Magnitude is this externality as noncontinuous or interrupted. But though we thus have a multitude of Ones, this is not the multitude of atoms and the void, or Repulsion in general, meeting us once again: Discrete Magnitude is Quantity; and for that very reason their discreteness is continuous. The continuity in discreteness consists in the fact that the Ones are equal to one another, or have the same unity. Discrete Magnitude, then, is the externality of much One posited as the same, and not of the many Ones in general; it is posited as the Many of one unity.

Ordinarily, when an image is formed of Continuous and of Discrete Magnitude, it is overlooked that each of these magnitudes has both the moments, continuity and discreteness, and that their difference is only constituted by which of the two moments is posited determinateness, and which that which only is in itself. Space, Time, Matter, and so on, are fixed magnitudes because each is a repulsion from itself, where there is a stream of extrogression without any transition or relation to what is qualitatively Other. They have the absolute potentiality of the One being posited relatively to them, and not merely as the empty potentiality of a mere otherness (as we say that a tree might occupy the space occupied by a stone): they contain in themselves the principle of the One, it is one of the determinations which constitute them.

Conversely, continuity must not be overlooked in Discrete Magnitude: this moment, as has been shown, is the One as unity.

Continuous and Discrete Magnitude may be considered as species of Quantity, but only in so far as magnitude is posited not under any external determinateness, but solely under the determinatenesses of its own moments; the ordinary transition from genus to species allows external determinations to be applied to these according to some external principle of classification. And so far Continuous and Discrete Magnitude are not yet Quanta: they are Quantity itself in each one of its two forms. If they are called magnitude, this is because they have this in common with Quantum, to be a determinateness applied to Quantity.

Discrete Magnitude, first, has the One for principle; secondly, it is a plurality of Ones; thirdly, it is, essentially, static; it is One, but One transcended, or as unity; it is self-continuation as such in the discreteness of the Ones. It is therefore posited as one magnitude, and its determinateness is the One, which, in this positedness and determinate being is exclusive One, or Limit, applied to unity. Discrete Magnitude as such is not to be limited immediately; but, as distinct from Continuous Magnitude, it exists as a Determinate Being and a Something whose determinateness is One, and, as being in a Determinate Being, is also first negation and Limit.

This Limit is referred to unity and applied to it as negation, and, besides this, as One is also referred to itself; it is thus including and comprehending Limit. Here the Limit is not distinguished from the Something of its Determinate Being, but, as One, is immediately this negative point itself. But the Being which here is limited exists essentially as continuity, by virtue of which it passes beyond the Limit and beyond this One, and is indifferent to them. Real discrete Quantity is therefore one Quantity, or Quantum,—Quantity as Determinate Being and Something.

Since the One, which is Limit, comprehends in itself the many Ones of discrete Quantity, it in so doing also posits them as transcended in itself. It is Limit as applied to continuity in general as such, and hence the distinction between Continuous and Discrete Magnitude is here immaterial; or, rather, it is Limit to the continuity of the one as much as of the other: both pass over into the state of Quantum.