The conclusion is this: quantity will predominate over quality in individuals to the extent that they approach a condition in which they are, so to speak, mere individuals and nothing more, and to the extent that they are thereby more separate one from another; and it must be emphasized that this does not mean that they are more differentiated, for there is also a qualitative differentiation, which is properly speaking the opposite of that quantitative differentiation in which the separation in question consists. This separation turns individuals into so many ‘units’, and turns their collectivity into quantitative multiplicity; at the limit, these individuals would be no more than something comparable to the imagined ‘atoms’ of the physicists, deprived of every qualitative determination; and although this limit can never in fact be reached, it lies in the direction which the world of today is following. A mere glance at things as they are is enough to make it clear that the aim is everywhere to reduce everything to uniformity, whether it be human beings themselves or the things among which they live, and it is obvious that such a result can only be obtained by suppressing as far as possible every qualitative distinction; but it is particularly to be noted that some people, through a strange delusion, are all too willing to mistake this ‘uniformization’ for a ‘unification’, whereas it is really exactly the opposite, as must appear evident in the light of the ever more marked accentuation of ‘separativity’ implied. It must be insisted that quantity can only separate and cannot unite; everything that proceeds from ‘matter’ produces nothing but antagonism, in many diverse forms, between fragmentary ‘units’ that are at a point directly opposite to true unity, or at least are pressing toward that point with all the weight of a quantity no longer balanced by quality; but ‘uniformization’ constitutes so important an aspect of the modern world, and one so liable to be wrongly interpreted, that another chapter must be devoted to a fuller development of this subject.
7
Uniformity against Unity
If the domain of manifestation that constitutes our world is considered as a whole, it can be said that the existences contained therein, as they gradually move away from the principial unity, become progressively less qualitative and more quantitative. Principial unity, which contains synthetically within itself all the qualitative determinations of the possibilities of this domain, is in fact its essential pole, whereas its substantial pole, which evidently must become nearer as the other becomes more remote, is represented by pure quantity, with the indefinite ‘atomic’ multiplicity it implies, and with the exclusion of any distinction between its elements other than the numerical. This gradual movement away from essential unity can be envisaged from a twofold point of view, that of simultaneity and that of succession; this means that it can be seen as simultaneous in the constitution of manifested beings, where its degrees determine for their constituent elements, or for the corresponding modalities, a sort of hierarchy; or alternatively as successive in the very movement of the whole of manifestation from the beginning to the end of a cycle: needless to say it is to the second point of view that attention will chiefly be directed in this book. In all cases however the domain in question can be represented geometrically by a triangle of which the apex is the essential pole, which is pure quality, while the base is the substantial pole, which in our world is pure quantity, symbolized by the multiplicity of the points comprised in the base, and contrasted with the single point which is the apex; and if lines are drawn parallel to the base to represent different degrees of remoteness from the apex, it becomes clear that multiplicity, which symbolizes the quantitative, will be all the more accentuated as the base is approached and the apex left behind. Nevertheless, to make the symbol as exact as possible, the base must be supposed to be indefinitely remote from the apex, firstly because the domain of manifestation is in itself truly indefinite, and secondly so that the multiplicity of the points in the base may be, so to speak, brought to its maximum; this would also indicate in addition that the base, that is to say pure quantity, can never be reached in the course of the development of manifestation, though manifestation tends always more and more toward it; it would also indicate that from below a certain level the apex, that is to say essential unity or pure quality, would be more or less lost to view, and this corresponds precisely to the existing condition of our world.
It was said earlier that in pure quantity the ‘units’ are only distinguished one from another numerically, there being indeed no other category in which a distinction can be made; but this alone makes it clear that pure quantity is really and necessarily beneath all manifested existence. It is useful to recall here what Leibnitz referred to as the ‘principle of indiscernibles’, by which he meant that there cannot exist anywhere two identical beings, that is to say, two beings alike in every respect. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is an immediate consequence of the limitlessness of universal possibility, which carries with it the absence of all repetition in particular possibilities; it can indeed be said that if two beings are assumed to be identical they would not really be two, but, as coinciding in every respect, they would actually be but one and the same being; conversely, in order that beings may not be identical or indiscernible there must always be some qualitative difference between them, and their determinations can never be purely quantitative. Leibnitz expresses this by saying that it is never true that two beings, whatever they may be, differ solo numero, and this, in its application to bodies, overrides ‘mechanistic’ conceptions such as those of Descartes; and Leibnitz goes on to say that if they did not differ qualitatively ‘they would not even be beings,’ but something like divisions, exactly resembling each other, of a homogeneous space and time; such divisions have no real existence, but are only what the scholastics called entia rationis. In this connection it may be remarked that Leibnitz himself does not seem to have had an adequate idea of the nature of space and time, for when he defines space simply as an ‘order of coexistence’ and time as an ‘order of succession’ he is only considering them from a purely logical point of view, thereby reducing them to homogenous containers quite without quality and so with no effective existence, and he is taking no account whatever of their ontological nature, that is to say, of the real nature of space and time as manifested in our world, wherein they really exist as conditions determining the special mode of existence distinguished as corporeal existence.