Cause Principle Unity

Fifth dialogue
one, nor being, nor the true, because he did not recognize being as one.
Although he could have adopted the meaning of being which is common
to substance and accident, and further, distinguished his categories according
to as many genera and species as there are specific differences, nonetheless
he perceived truth badly, not going deeply enough into the knowledge
of this unity and of this indistinction of the eternal nature and eternal
being. With his harmful explanations and his irresponsible arguments, this
arid sophist perverted the sense of the ancients and hampered the truth,
less, perhaps, out of intellectual weakness, than out of jealousy and ambition.
DICSONO. So that this world, this being, this truth, this universe, this
infinity, this immensity is found entire in each of its parts: it is the ubique
[everywhere] itself. Thus, everything in the universe, in relation to the universe,
exists everywhere according to its capacity, whatever its relation
might be with other particular bodies; for it is above, below, right, left and
so on, in keeping with all local differences, since, in the totality of the infinite,
there are all these differences and none of them. Whatever thing we
take in the universe, it has in itself that which is entire everywhere, and
hence comprehends, in its own way, the entire world soul (although, as we
have said, it does not comprehend it totally), and that world soul is entire
in every part of the universe. This is why, even if the act is one and constitutes
a single being, wherever it may be found, we must not think that there
is, in the world, a plurality of substance and of that which is truly being.
Following on this, I know that you take as manifest that each of these
innumerable worlds, which we see in the universe, is not found there so
much as if in a containing site, nor as in an interval or a space, but is found
there as in a place that comprehends it, a conserver, mover and efficient,
which itself is comprised in its entirety in each of these worlds, as the soul
is found in its entirety in each of the parts of that world. For that reason,
although a particular world moves towards or around another, as the earth
moves to and around the sun, nonetheless, with respect to the universe,
nothing moves to or around it, but only within it.
You, further, hold that, just as the soul (to take up the common way of
speaking once more) pervades that great mass to which it gives being,
remaining altogether indivisible, so that it is altogether present in the whole
and any of its parts, so the essence of the universe is one both in the infinite
and in anything taken as a member of the universe; so that, substantially,
the whole and each of its parts are but one. In your opinion, Parmenides
was, therefore, right to say that the universe is one, infinite and immobile
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