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VI. 1. 4]
ON THE KINDS OF BEING
5

only comes under that category when it constitutes a definite geometric figure.

Are we then to consider numbers, and numbers only, as constituting the category of Quantity? If we mean numbers in themselves, they are (not quantities but) substances, for the very good reason that they exist independently. If we mean numbers displayed in the objects participant in number, the numbers which give the count of the objects—ten horses or ten oxen, and not ten units—then we have a paradoxical result: first, the numbers in themselves, it would appear, are substances but the numbers in objects are not; and secondly, the numbers inhere in the objects as measures (of extension or weight), yet as standing outside the objects they have no measuring power, as do rulers and scales. If however their existence is independent, and they do not inhere in the objects, but are simply called in for the purpose of measurement, the objects will be quantities only to the extent of participating in Quantity.

So with the numbers themselves: how can they (in these circumstances) constitute the category of Quantity? They are measures; but how do measures come to be quantities or Quantity? Doubtless in that, existing as they do among the Existents and not being adapted to any of the other categories, they find their place under the influence of verbal suggestion and so are referred to the so-called category of Quantity. We see the unit mark off one measurement and then proceed to another; and number thus reveals the amount of a thing, and the mind measures by availing itself of the total figure.

It follows that in measuring it is not measuring essence; it pronounces its "one" or "two," whatever the character of the objects, even summing contraries. It does not take count of condition—hot, handsome; it simply notes how many.

Number then, whether regarded in itself or in the participant objects, belongs to the category of Quantity, but the participant objects do not. "Three yards long" does not fall under the category of Quantity, but only the three.

Why then are magnitudes classed as quantities? Not because they are so in the strict sense, but because they approximate to Quantity,

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