Plato had shown that the idea of the One, exclusive of all multiplicity, was an impossible abstraction. Even to say "the One is," involves the duality of the One. The Absolute Being can be no abstract unity, but only a unity in multiplicity. Plotinus begins by ignoring this {373} supremely important philosophical principle. He falls back upon the lower level of oriental monism. God, he thinks, is absolutely One. He is the unity which lies beyond all multiplicity. There is in him no plurality, no movement, no distinction. Thought involves the distinction between object and subject; therefore the One is above and beyond thought. Nor is the One describable in terms of volition or activity. For volition involves the distinction between the willer and the willed, activity between the actor and that upon which he acts. God, therefore, is neither thought, nor volition, nor activity. He is beyond all thought and all being. As absolutely infinite, He is also absolutely indeterminate. All predicates limit their subject, and hence nothing can be predicated of the One. He is unthinkable, for all thought limits and confines that which is thought. He is the ineffable and inconceivable. The sole predicates which Plotinus applies to Him are the One and the Good. He sees, however, that these predicates, as much as any others, limit the infinite. He regards them, therefore, not as literally expressing the nature of the infinite, but as figuratively shadowing it forth. They are applied by analogy only. We can, in truth, know nothing of the One, except that it _is_.