Along the vertical spectrum there are three principle degrees of abstraction to which we have access; from the bottom up, they are 1) the positive sciences, which still have one foot in matter, 2) mathematics, and 3) the metaphysical, this latter being completely immaterial and going to the sort of cosmos in which math and intelligible matter can even exist.
The vertical spectrum can be further subdivided in any number of ways, for example, between physics and biology, psychology and neurology, theology and metaphysics. Nevertheless, despite these divisions, it's all still -- somehow -- One Cosmos.
In the previous post we added "indivisible," but that's only half the story, for in reality, it is always both divisible and indivisible, continuous and discontinuous, radial (the Cosmic Ray from the center out) and circumferential (semiautonomous circles around Celestial Central).
This goes to one of those primordial complementarities we've heard so little about. However, as with all such complementarities, one pole must be prior, and in this case it's indivisibility, for the alternative is both inconceivable and impossible: no amount of parts adds up to the whole if the whole isn't already fractally present in the parts.
In the absence of this prior unity, the best we can accomplish is an aggregation, agglomeration, or agglutination; a blob, glob, or mob.
G-L agrees that "A being's quantitative unity in space is not the criterion for its substantial unity. This quantitative unity presumes only an accidental union (an aggregation of molecules)." In short, there is the accidental unity of the blob, and the substantial unity of the whole: substance and accident, another one of those primordial complementarities.
This calls to mind a mundane but insultaining political thought: you will have noticed that the left always makes transparently fraudulent appeals to "unity," even while its primitive identity politics assures that real (substantial) unity is impossible. They invent fake unities such as the LGBTQ community, the black community, or Latin-x community, etc.
First of all, these aren't real communities, since a "black community" of Sharptons, Obamas, and Waterses has no commonality with a "black community" of Elders, Sowells, and Thomases. Second, there is no substantial unity among the primitive tribes to which the left never stops pandering. The only unity is accidental, revolving around force, cash prizes, and demonization of those of us who don't belong to a tribe of DNC certified victims.
Rather, we are members of a community with a higher unity revolving around civilization, natural law, the Constitution, etc. Our movement rests upon a substantial unity, not an accidental one of skin tone, genitalia, or sexual deviance.
Which, come to think of it, mirrors the substantial unity of the Vertical Church of the Friends of Reality, the body of Christ, in which it doesn't matter whether you are Jew or Greek, man or woman, slave or free, for all are one in this Christ person-principle.
Or, if you prefer to keep things metaphysical and not theological, the Logos-Christos is the very principle whereby this real substantial unity is possible. In the absence of this principle there could be no substantial unity-in-diversity on the human plane. Rather, we'd just be radically individualistic monads, which redounds to Marxism at one end or libertarianism at the other, for extremists meet.
Even so, humans can't help possessing implicit knowledge of the whole, even if they explicitly deny it:
Indeed, the most influential form of atheism, namely Marxism, asserts in the strictest form this unity of being in all that is, by declaring all being to be matter (Ratzinger).
This absolute denial conceals an affirmation of the Absolute. Conversely, we say Yes! to a rational cosmos right up front:
Logos signifies reason, meaning, or even "word" -- a meaning, therefore, that is Word, that is relationship, that is creative. The God who is logos guarantees the intelligibility of the world, the intelligibility of our existence, the aptitude of reason to know God and the reasonableness of God.... The world comes from reason, and this reason is a Person, is Love (ibid.).
With regard to the substance/accident complementarity, the alternative view is that substances do not actually exist, but rather, are only verbal entities. This modern baton was handed off to the postmodern crowd, which promptly hurtled into the abyss, with the view that words only point to other words, sealing us into an ever-shrinking circle of non-being.
For us, being is happily the object of the intellect, and the two -- intellect and intelligible being -- are a diversity-in-unity. We reject the notion that the sciences are just "well-constructed languages" with no anchor in being.
I've gone on too long; we'll conclude with this: "What makes a man is not freedom, morality, religion, sociability, or speech. It is reason, for all the other notes are deduced from reason" (G-L).
I suppose we could say that Reason-Logos provides both the horizontal melody and the vertical harmony for the Song Supreme. Without a rationality rooted in being there can be no freedom, morality, or knowledge. In other words, our freedom is ordered to the good because our intellect is ordered to the true.
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