Thus what shows up in the synthesis speciosa temporis secundum quantitatem [synthesis that produces an image of time corresponding to quantity or magnitude130] is the pure “numerical amount” [das Gezählte]. But we must distinguish between this “pure numerical amount” and some thing that gets counted up [das Abgezählte]. The pure numerical amount is always the particular amount as such. This amount (and every other amount as such) is what every specific number numbers-as-an-amount (and does nothing else but that). Any number [say, five] does not count up and determine something else [say, five dots]. No, the number itself is that amount. A number is a number only as the numbering-of-an-amount [Zählen]. And as this kind of numbering, the number co-numbers (if I may put it that way) along with the other numbers. To say it “co-numbers” means nothing else than that it belongs with the other numbers.
This numbering-of-an-amount, as co-numbering along with the other numbers, is the very being of number. Therefore, this numberingof-an-amount that the number carries out “forms” [bildet], of and by itself, the series of numbers. By contrast, a thing that has been counted up is something that is not itself a number—or, at any rate, need not be a number. Rather, it is first of all something that we can declare to be of such and such an amount with regard to a number. Any manifold at all can be counted up. Numbers too can be counted up—I can say: “12, 73, 84, 51, and 67 are five numbers.” In this case a manifold of numbers its itself counted, but counted with regard to a number. The fact that numbers are counted up in this case does not change the fact that a counting up is going on. And this process, as a counting-up of numbers, is in no way identical with the pure numbering-of-an-amount.
So what is really numbered in the pure numbering-of-an-amount? Whatever the case may be, pure numbering-of-an-amount cannot number-the-amount of anything in the sense of “counting it up,” because “number-of-an-amount” would already be presupposed in such counting. Rather, here it is a matter of a numbering in which the number itself and as such is. Such [383] numbering is the numbering-of-acertain-amount on the part of the number itself, which is the very being of number.131 As itself the numbering-of-an-amount, number is the rule
130. [For this translation of quantitas as “magnitude” (die Bloße Größe), see B 745.]
131. [In this sentence, Sichselbstzählen surely should not be “the number’s numbering of itself.” The faux reflexive is at least a passive, and more likely a tautology: “The being of a number is to be the number-of-a-certain amount,” or with an is-qua-copula: “The number itself is nothing butthe numbering-of-a-certain-amount.”]