De docta ignorantia

There was never any nation which did not worship God and did not believe him to be the absolute maximum. We find Minar to have noted in the books of Antiquities that the Sissenni most worshipped unity. Pythagoras, however, a man most illustrious in his age by irrefragable authority, asserted that unity to be threefold. Investigating the truth of this, lifting our mind higher, let us say according to what was premised. That no one doubts which precedes all otherness is eternal: for otherness is the same as mutability, but everything which naturally precedes mutability is immutable, wherefore eternal. But otherness consists of one and another, wherefore otherness, like number, is posterior to unity. Unity is therefore by nature prior to otherness, and since it naturally precedes it, unity is eternal.

Further, all inequality is from the equal and the exceeding. Inequality is therefore posterior in nature to equality, which can be most firmly proved by resolution. For all inequality is resolved into equality: for the equal is between the greater and the less. If therefore you take away that by which the greater is greater, it will be equal; but if the less be in question, take from the remainder that by which the greater is greater, and it will become equal. And this you can also do until by taking away you come to simples. It is plain therefore that all inequality, by taking away, is reduced to equality. Equality therefore naturally precedes inequality, and inequality and otherness are simultaneous in nature: for where there is inequality, there is necessarily otherness, and conversely. For between at least two there will be otherness. But that will make doubleness with respect to one of those two, wherefore there will be inequality. Otherness and inequality, therefore, will be simultaneous in nature, especially since the binary is the first otherness and the first inequality; but it has been proved that equality precedes inequality in nature, wherefore also otherness: equality is therefore eternal.

Further, if there be two causes, one of which is prior to the other, the effect of the prior will be prior in nature to that of the posterior. But unity either is connexion or is the cause of connexion. For things are called connected from this, that they are united together. The binary also either is division or is the cause of division. For the binary is the first division. If therefore unity is the cause of connexion, but the binary the cause of division; then, just as unity is prior in nature to the binary, so also connexion is prior in nature to division.

But division and otherness are simultaneous in nature, wherefore also connexion, just as unity is eternal, since it is prior to otherness.

It has been proved, therefore, that since unity itself is eternal and equality is eternal, likewise connexion is eternal. But there cannot be several eternals. For if there were several eternals, then since unity would precede all plurality, something would be prior in nature to eternity, which is impossible. Moreover, if there were several eternals, one would be lacking to the other, and therefore none of them would be perfect, and thus there would be something eternal which would not be eternal, because it would not be perfect; which, since it is not possible, hence several eternals cannot be. But since unity is eternal, equality is eternal, likewise also connexion: hence unity, equality, and connexion are one. And this is that threefold unity which Pythagoras, the first of all philosophers, the glory of Italy and Greece, taught to be adored. But let us yet subjoin some things more expressly on the generation of equality from unity.