It is evident that quantity informs us of the amount of a thing, and permits us to measure this; therefore itself must be an amount. This then is the element common to number (the discrete quantity), and to continuous dimension. But number is anterior, and continuous dimension proceeds therefrom; number consists in a certain blending of movement and stability; continuous dimension is a certain movement or proceeds from some movement; movement produces it in its progress towards infinity, but stability arrests it in its progress, limits it, and creates unity. Besides, we shall in the following explain the generation of number and dimension; and, what is more, their mode of existence, and how to conceive of it rightly. It is possible that we might find that number should be posited among the primary genera, but that, because of its composite nature, continuous dimension should be posited among the posterior or later genera; that number is to be posited among stable things, while dimension belongs among those in movement. But, as said above, all this will be treated of later. QUALITY IS NOT A PRIMARY GENUS BECAUSE IT IS POSTERIOR TO BEING. 14. Let us now pass on to quality. Why does quality also fail to appear among the primary genera? Because quality also is posterior to them; it does indeed follow after being. The first Being must have these (quantity and quality) as consequences, though being is neither constituted nor completed thereby; otherwise, being would be posterior to them. Of course, as to the composite beings, formed of several elements, in which are both numbers and qualities, they indeed are differentiated by those different elements which then constitute qualities, though they simultaneously contain common (elements). As to the primary genera, however, the distinction to be established does not proceed from simpleness or compositeness, but of simpleness and what completes being. Notice, I am not saying, "of what completes 'some one' being"; for if we were dealing with some one being, there would be nothing unreasonable in asserting that such a being was completed by a quality, since this being would have been in existence already before having the quality, and would receive from the exterior only the property of being such or such. On the contrary, absolute Being must essentially possess all that constitutes it. COMPLEMENT OF BEING IS CALLED QUALITY ONLY BY COURTESY.