De docta ignorantia

Nothing can be said or thought concerning the truth to be investigated, of which we treated in the first part, that is not enfolded in the first truth. For all things that agree with what was said here concerning the first truth must be true; the rest, which disagree, are false. But it has been shown there that there can be only one maximum of all maxima. The maximum, however, is that to which nothing can be opposed, where the minimum too is the maximum. Infinite unity, therefore, is the enfolding of all things;

This is indeed called unity, which unites all things; and it is maximal not only as the enfolding of numerical unity, but as the enfolding of all things. And just as in number, which unfolds unity, nothing is found but unity, so in all things that are, nothing is found but the maximum. This unity is indeed called point in relation to quantity, which unfolds that unity, since nothing is found in quantity but point. Just as the point is everywhere in the line, everywhere in a different way, so too in surface and in body. Nor is there more than one point, which is nothing other than infinite unity itself, since that unity itself — the point which is the limit, perfection, and totality of line and quantity, enfolding it — has the line as its first unfolding, in which nothing is found but point. So too rest is unity, enfolding motion, which is rest ordered in series, if you consider it subtly. Motion, therefore, is the unfolding of rest. So the now, or presence, enfolds time. The past was present, the future will be present; nothing, therefore, is found in time but presence ordered. The past and the future, therefore, are the unfolding of the present; the present is the enfolding of all present times, and present times are serially its unfolding, and nothing is found in them but the present. Presence, then, is the one enfolding of all times; and that presence is unity itself. So identity is the enfolding of diversity, equality of inequality, and simplicity of divisions or distinctions. There is, then, one enfolding, and the enfolding is not one thing of substance, another of quality, or of quantity, and so of the rest, since there is but one maximum, with which the minimum will coincide, where enfolded diversity is not opposed to enfolding identity. For just as unity precedes otherness, so too point — which belongs to the perfect — precedes magnitude, for every perfect thing precedes the imperfect; so rest precedes motion, identity diversity, equality inequality, and so of the rest, which are convertible with unity, which is eternity itself; for there cannot be several eternal things. God, therefore, is the enfolding of all things in this: that all things are in him; he is the unfolding of all things in this: that he himself is in all things. And to declare our meaning in numbers: number is the unfolding of unity; number, however, bespeaks reason, and reason is from mind; therefore brute animals, which have no mind, cannot count. Just as, then, from our mind, through our understanding many singulars in relation to one common thing, number arises; so the plurality of things comes from the divine mind, in which there are many without plurality, because in enfolding unity. For through this: that things cannot equally participate in equality of being itself, God in eternity understood one thing in one way, another in another, from which plurality — which in him is unity — has arisen. Plurality or number, moreover, has no other being than as it is from unity itself. Unity, therefore, without which there would be no number, is number in plurality; and this is indeed to unfold unity: namely, that all things be in plurality. But the mode of enfolding and unfolding exceeds our mind; who, I ask, would understand how there is a plurality of things from the divine mind, given that God's understanding is his being, who is infinite unity? If you proceed to number, considering the likeness — how number is the multiplication of one common thing through mind — it seems as though God, who is unity, were multiplied in things, given that his understanding is being; and yet you understand that it is not possible for that unity, which is infinite and maximal, to be multiplied. How, then, do you understand a plurality whose being is from the one, without multiplication? Or how do you understand the multiplication of unity without multiplication? Not indeed as of one species or one genus in many species or individuals, apart from which the genus or species exists only through the abstracting intellect.

How God, then — whose unitary being is neither through an intellect abstracting from things, nor united to or immersed in things — is unfolded through the number of things, no one understands. If you consider things without him, they are nothing, just as number without unity. If you consider him without things, he is, and things are nothing. If you consider him as he is in things, you consider that the thing is something in which he is; and in this you err, as was clear in the preceding chapter, since the being of the thing, as a diverse thing, is not something else, but its being is from the being of the maximum. If you consider the thing as it is in God, then it is God and unity. Nothing remains but to say that the plurality of things arises through this: that God is in nothing. For take God away from the creature, and nothing remains; take substance away from the composite, and nothing remains but accident — and thus nothing remains. How this can be grasped by our intellect — for although accident perishes when substance is removed, accident is not on that account nothing; it perishes because the being of an accident is to inhere. And therefore, just as quantity exists only through the being of substance, yet because it inheres, substance is then quantified through quantity. It is not so here, for the creature does not inhere in God in this way; for it confers nothing upon God, as accident does upon substance; indeed accident so confers upon substance that, although it has its being from it, nevertheless as a consequence substance cannot be without any accident; this indeed cannot similarly hold in the case of God.

How, then, shall we be able to understand the creature, as creature, which is from God, and yet can attribute nothing even consequently to him who is the maximum? And if, as creature, it does not have even as much entity as an accident, but is utterly nothing, how is it understood that the plurality of things is unfolded through this: that God is in nothing, since nothing is not of any entity? If you say: his omnipotent will is the cause, and will and omnipotence are his being — for all theology is in a circle — then you must confess that you utterly do not know enfolding and unfolding, how it comes about; and that you know only this: that you do not know the mode, although you also know that God is the enfolding and unfolding of all things, and that, as he is enfolding, all things in him are he himself, and, as he is unfolding, he in all things is that which they are, as truth in an image; as if a face were in its own image, which is multiplied at a distance and nearby from it, as regards the multiplication of the image — I speak not of local distance but of gradual distance from the truth of the face, since it cannot be multiplied otherwise; in those multiplied diverse images from the one face, the one face would appear in diverse ways and manifoldly, beyond all sense and mind, in an unintelligible manner.