Taylor - Theoretic Arithmetic.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

from the art which he possesses, fashions the wood, so as to
receive the form of a bed, and that the numerative soul, from
possessing in herself a monad which has the relation of a principle,
gives form and subsistence to all numbers? But in thit
only consists the difference, that the carpenter's art is not naturally
inherent in us, and requires manual operation, because it
is conversant with sensible matter, but the numerative art is
naturally present with us, and is therefore possessed by all men,
and has an intellectual matter which it instantaneously invests
with form. And this is that which deceives the multitude, who
think that the heptad is nothing besides seven monads For
the imagination of the vulgar, unless it first sees a thing unadorned,
afterwards the supervening energy of the adorner, and
lastly, above all the thing itself, perfect and formed, cannot be
persuaded that it has two natures, one formless, the other
formal, and still further, that which beyond these imparts
form; but asserts that the subject is one, and without generation.
Hence, perhaps, the ancient theologists and Plato ascribed
temporal generations to things without generation, and to
things which are perpetually adorned, and regularly disposed,
privation of order and ornament, the erroneous and the boundless,
that they might lead men to the knoyledge of a formal
and effective cause. It is, therefore, by no means wonderful,
that though seven sensible monads are never without the hep
tad, these should be distinguished by science, and that the
former should have the relation of a subject, and be analogous
to matter, but the latter should correspond to species and form.
Again, as when water is changed into air, the water does not
become air, or the subject of air, but that which was the subject
of water becomes the subject of air, so when one number
unites itself with another, as for instance the triad with the
duad, the species or forms of the two numbers are not mingled,
except in their immaterial reasons, in which at the same time