On Plurality (-1899)

"If simple unity could be adequately perceived by the sight or by any other sense, then, there would be nothing to attract the mind towards reality any more than in the case of the finger [...] But when it is combined with the perception of its opposite, and seems to involve the conception of plurality as much as unity, then thought begins to be aroused within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision asks 'What is absolute unity?' This is the way in which the study of the one has a power of drawing and converting the mind to the contemplation of reality." (Plato, "Republic", cca. 380 BC)

"In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause." (Aristotle, "Metaphysics", cca. 335-323 BC)

"What is one is indivisible whatever it may be, e.g. a man is one man, not many. Number on the other hand is a plurality of 'ones' and a certain quantity of them. Hence number must stop at the indivisible: for 'two' and 'three' are merely derivative terms, and so with each of the other numbers." (Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 4th-century BC)

"There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality." (Nicholas of Cusa, "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate."
"Plurality is never to be posited without necessity." (William of Occam,"Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi", 1495)

"The essence of the 'Truth' most glorious and mose exalted is nothing but Being His Being is not subject to defect or diminution. He is untouched by change or variation, and is exempt from plurality and multiplicity, He transcends all manifestations, and is unknowable and invisible, Every 'how' and 'why' have made their appearance through Him, but in Himself He transcends every 'how' and 'why'. Everything is perceived by Him, while he is beyond perception. They outwaid eye is too dull to behold His beauty, and the eye of the heart is dimmed by the contemplation of His perfection." (Nūr ad-Dīn 'Abd ar-Rahmān Jāmī, "Lawāih", 15th century)

"The view of things [called Pantheism] [...] - that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; [...] Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research [...] He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, - the metaphysical unity of life." (Arthur Schopenhauer, "On the Basis of Morality", 1840)

"Even with the examples of the infinite considered so far it could not escape our notice that not all infinite multitudes are to be regarded as equal to one another in respect of their plurality, but that some of them are greater (or smaller) than others, i.e. another multitude is contained as a part in one multitude (or on the contrary one multitude occurs in another as a mere part).This also is a claim which sounds to many paradoxical." (Bernard Bolzano, "Paradoxes of the Infinite", 1851)

"But rather they are able, in spite of that relationship between them that is the same for both of them, to have a relationship of inequality in their pluralities, so that one of them can be presented as a whole, of which the other is a part. An equality of these pluralities may only be concluded if some other reason is added, such as that both multitudes have exactly the same determining grounds, e.g. they have exactly the same way of being formed." (Bernard Bolzano, "Paradoxien des Unedlichen" ["Paradoxes of the Infinite"], 1851)

"Therefore both multitudes have one and the same plurality, as one can also say, equal plurality. Obviously this conclusion becomes void as soon as the multitude of things in A is an infinite multitude, for now not only do we never reach, by counting, the last thing in A, but rather, by virtue of the definition of an infinite multitude, in itself there is no last thing in A, i.e. however many have already been designated, there are always others to designate." (Bernard Bolzano, "Paradoxien des Unedlichen" ["Paradoxes of the Infinite"], 1851)