things to us. And we assert to boot that it has given us number, and will give it us still, if any one is willing to follow us. For if a person will proceed to a right view of it, whether it be the pleasure of any one to call it the World, or Olympus, or Heaven, let him so call it; but let him follow, wherever it assumes a varied form, when it causes the stars in it to revolve along all their courses,[1] and when it imparts the seasons and food for all, and the remaining gift[2] of intellect, as we should say, together with all number, and every other good. Now this is the greatest thing, when any one, receiving from it the gift of number, proceeds through every period. Returning back still a little in our discourse, let us call to mind that we have conceived very correctly, that if we take away number from human nature, we should be intellectual not at all. For the soul of the animal, from whom reason is absent, would scarcely any longer be able to receive every virtue. Now the animal, which does not know two and three, even and odd, and is entirely ignorant of number, would never be able to give a reason respecting those things, of which it alone possesses sensation and memory; but nothing hinders it (from possessing)[3] the other virtues, fortitude and temperance. But he, who is deprived of true reason, will never become wise; and he, to whom wisdom is not present, which is the greatest part of the whole of virtue, would never be perfectly good, nor happy. In this way there is every necessity for number to be laid down as a principle. But why it is necessary, there would be a discourse longer than all that has been spoken. And correctly will the present one have been stated likewise, that of the things, mentioned as belonging to the other arts, which we have gone through, [4]and permitted them all to be arts,[4] not even one would remain, but all perish entirely, when any one
- ↑ Ast says that in διεξόδους there is an allusion to the notion, that the stars formed an army, which went out upon expeditions. But, unless I am greatly mistaken, the author wrote λοξοὺς ὁδοὺς— For not only was the apparent course of the Sun through the ecliptic said to be oblique— and hence he was called Λοξίας— but those of the other stars likewise. See at the Rivals, p. 420, n. 6. On the confusion of λοξὸς see at Hipp. Maj. §18, n. 65, and here, §9, p. 26, n. 1.
- ↑ In lieu of δὲ οὖν, which could not thus follow καὶ τὴν ἅλλην, I have translated, as if the Greek were δόσιν, similar to ἀριθμῶν δόσιν just afterwards.
- ↑ Ficinus alone adds, what the sense requires, "habere—"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 The words ἐῶντες εἶναι are omitted by Ficinus and Taylor.
