applause. Had she ever opened them, one queries. Book VII., "Arithmetica," is even worse. It begins with the current foolishness regarding the virtues and interesting qualities of the first ten numbers: "How shall I commemorate thee, O Seven, always to be revered, neither begotten like the other numbers, nor procreative, a virgin even as Minerva?" Capella never is original. From Pythagoras on, the curiosities of numbers had interested the pagan mind.[1] These fantasies gained new power and application in the writings of the Fathers. For them, the numbers used in Scripture had prefigurative significance. Such notions came to Christianity from its environment, and then took on a new apologetic purpose. Here an intellect like Augustine's is no whit above its fellows. In arguing from Scripture numbers he is at his very obvious worst.[2] Fortunately the coming time was to have better treatises, like the De arithmetica of Boëthius, which was quite free from mysticism. But in Boëthius's time, as well as before and after him, it was the allegorical significance of numbers apologetically pointed that aroused deepest interest.
Astronomy makes one of Capella's seven Artes. His eighth book, a rather abject compilation, is devoted to it. His matter, of course, is not yet Christianized. But Christianity was to draw Astronomy into its service; and the determination of the date of Easter and other Church festivals became the chief end of what survived of astronomical knowledge.
The patristic attitude toward cosmogony and natural science plainly appears in the Hexaëmeron of St. Ambrose.[3] This was a commentary on the first chapters of Genesis, or rather an argumentative exposition of the Scriptural account of the Creation, primarily directed against those who asserted that the world was uncreated and eternal. As one turns the leaves of this writing, it becomes clear that the interest of Ambrose is always religious, and that his soul is gazing beyond the works of the Creation to another world. He
- ↑ On the symbolism of Numbers see Cantor, Vorlesungen über Ges. der Mathematik, 2nd ed. pp. 95, 96, 146, 156, 529, 531.
- ↑ See an extraordinary example taken from the treatise against Faustus, post, Chapter XXVII. Also De doc. Chris, ii. 16; De Trinitate, iv. 4-6.
- ↑ Migne, Pat. Lat. 14, col. 123-273. Written cir. 389.
