13 



&.PNE UMA TOG E NY. 



PRIMARY ACT. 



55. The + or. in other words, numbers are acts or 

 functions. Zero is, consequently, the primary act. Zero 

 is, therefore, no absolute nothing, but an act without sub- 

 stratum. Generally speaking there is, therefore, no 

 nothing ; the mathematical nothing is itself an act, con- 

 sequently a something. The nothing is only inventive. 



56. An act devoid of substratum is a spiritual act. 

 Numbers are, accordingly, not positions and negations 

 of an absolute nothing, but of a spiritual act. 



57. The zero is an eternal act ; numbers are repeti- 

 tions of this eternal act, or its halting points, like the 

 steps in progression. With zero the Eternal therefore 

 originates directly, or both are only different expressions 

 for one and the same act, according with the difference 

 of the science wherein they are employed. Mathematics 

 designates its primary act by the name of zero ; Philo- 

 sophy by that of Eternal. It is an error to believe that 

 numbers were absolute nothings ; they are acts and con- 

 sequently realities. While numbers in a mathematical 

 sense are positions and negations of Nothing, in the phi- 

 losophical they are positions and negations of the Eternal. 

 Everything which is real, posited, finite, has become this 

 out of numbers ; or, more strictly speaking, every Real is 

 absolutely nothing else than a number. This must be the 

 sense entertained of numbers in the Pythagorean doc- 

 trine, namely, that everything or the whole universe had 

 arisen from numbers. This is not to be taken in merely 

 a quantitative sense, as it has hitherto been erroneously, 

 but in an intrinsic sense, as implying that ah 1 things are 

 numbers themselves, or the acts of the Eternal. The 

 essence in numbers is naught else than the Eternal. The 

 Eternal only is or exists, and nothing else is when a 

 number exists. There is, therefore, nothing real but the 

 Eternal itself ; for every Real, or everything that is, is only 



