deduces the principles of all things; it was he who first called
philosophy by its name. He thought the first principles to be
numbers, and those symmetries in them which he styles harmonies;
and the composition of both he terms elements, called geometrical.
Again, he places unity and the indefinite binary number amongst the
principles. One of these principles ends in an efficient and
forming cause, which is Mind, and that is God; the other to the
passive and material part, and that is the visible world.
Moreover, the nature of number (he saith) consists in the ten; for
all people, whether Grecians or barbarians, reckon from one to ten,
and thence return to one again. Farther he avers the virtue of ten
consists in the quaternion; the reason whereof is this,--if any
person start from one, and add numbers so as to take in the
quaternary, he shall complete the number ten; if he passes the
four, he shall go beyond the ten; for one, two, three, and four
being added up together make ten. The nature of numbers,
therefore, if we regard the units, abideth in the ten; but if we
regard its power, in the four. Therefore the Pythagoreans say that
their most sacred oath is by that god who delivered to them
the quaternary.

By th' founder of the sacred number four,
Eternal Nature's font and source, they swore.

Of this number the soul of man is composed; for mind, knowledge,
opinion, and sense are the four that complete the soul, from which
all sciences, all arts, all rational faculties derive themselves.
For what our mind perceives, it perceives after the manner of a
thing that is one, the soul itself being a unity; as for instance,
a multitude of persons are not the object of our sense nor are