Cause Principle Unity

Cause, principle and unity
Secondly, consider that the intellect, wishing to liberate and detach itself
from the images to which it is bound, not only resorts to mathematical and
symbolic figures or analogies drawn from them in order to comprehend the
being and the substance of things, but also ascribes the multiplicity and
diversity of species to one and the same root. Thus, Pythagoras, who
posited numbers as the exclusive principles of things, understood unity to
be the basis and substance of all of them. Thus, Plato and other philosophers
who made species to consist of figures conceived of the point as substance
and universal genus, inasmuch as it is the common stock and root of
all figures. And perhaps surfaces and figures are what Plato meant ultimately
by his ‘great’, and the point and the atom are what he meant by his
‘small’, two principles of specification of things which refer, then, to one,
as everything that is divided refers to the undivided. Therefore, those who
say that the one is the substantial principle mean that substances are like
numbers, and others who think of the substantial principle as a point mean
that the substances of things are like figures, but all agree in positing an
indivisible principle. However, Pythagoras’ method is better and purer
than Plato’s, because unity is the cause and the reason for individuality and
the point, and it is a principle which is more absolute and appropriate to
universal being.
GERVASIO. Why has Plato, who came after him, not done as well or
better than Pythagoras?
TEOFILO. Because he preferred to speak less well, in a manner less adequate
and less appropriate, and to be acclaimed as a master, than to say
something better, in a better manner and be reputed a disciple. I mean that
the goal of his philosophy was more his personal glory than the truth; seeing
that, as I cannot doubt, he knew very well that his manner was more
appropriate to corporeal things or things considered corporeally, while that
of Pythagoras was no less suitable and adequate for corporeal things than it
was for those things which reason, imagination, intellect, and both intelligible
and sensible nature can forge. As everyone will acknowledge, Plato
was not ignorant of the fact that unity and numbers are essential in order
to justify and explain points and figures, but that these latter are not essential
for justifying and examining unity and numbers, as dimensional and
corporeal substance depends on the incorporeal and the indivisible.
Furthermore, he knew that unity and number are independent from points
and figures, because numbers may be explained without reference to measure,
but measure is not independent from numbers, because the understanding
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