Cust. Why, look ye, my good fellow, you'd best go teach the dumb son of Crœsus! I want to talk, and not be a dummy. Well,—but after this silence and these five years?
Pyth. You shall learn music and geometry.
Cust. A queer idea, that one must be a fiddler before one can be a wise man!
Pyth. Then you shall learn the science of numbers.
Cust. Thank you, but I know how to count already.
Pyth. How do you count?
Cust. One, two, three, four—
Pyth. Ha! what you call four is ten, and the perfect triangle, and the great oath by which we swear.[1]
Cust. Now, so help me the great Ten and Four, I never heard more divine or more wonderful words!
Pyth. And afterwards, stranger, you shall learn about Earth, and Air, and Water, and Fire,—what is their action, and what their form, and what their motion.
Cust. What! have Fire, Air, or Water bodily shape?
Pyth. Surely they have; else, without form and shape, how could they move?—Besides, you shall learn that the Deity consists in Number, Mind, and Harmony.
Cust. What you say is really wonderful!
Pyth. Besides what I have just told you, you shall
- ↑ Ten being the sum of 1, 2, 3, 4. Number, in the system of Pythagoras, was the fundamental principle of all things: in the Monad—Units—he recognised the Deity.
young divines exposing themselves in the pulpit before they have read their Greek Testament."
