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Taylor - Theoretic Arithmetic.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

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$Fin of natural effects. Because likewise it opens and shuts the<br />

recesses of generation, it is denominated, as the anonymous<br />

author observes, the key-bearer of nature, as is also the mother<br />

of the Gods who is represented with a key. But it is the introducer<br />

and cause of the constitution and permanency of the<br />

mathematical disciplines, because these are four in number,<br />

viz. arithmetic and geometry, music and astronomy; and also<br />

because the first numbers and the first forms subsist in the intelligible<br />

tetrad. It is likewise said to be the nature of Aeolus,<br />

on account of the variety of its peculiarity, according to the<br />

anonymous writer, and because without this it would be impossible<br />

for the orderly and universal distribution of things to<br />

subsist. With respect to the other appellations of the tetrad, as<br />

Meursius in his Denarius Pythagoricus has given but few extracts<br />

from the anonymous writer, though his treatise professedly<br />

contains an explanation of these names, and as I cannot<br />

find a satisfactory development of them in any ancient<br />

writer, the appellation Harmonia excepted, I shall not attempt<br />

any elucidation of them. But the tetrad was very properly<br />

called by the Pythagoreans harmony, because the quadruple<br />

ratio forms the symphony disdiapason.<br />

They also called the tetrad the first depth, because they considered<br />

a point as analogous to the monad, a line to the duad,<br />

a superficies to the triad, and a solid to the tetrad. They likewise<br />

denominated it justice, because, as we are informed by<br />

Alexander Aphrodisiensis (in Metaphys. major. cap. 5.) they<br />

were of opinion that the peculiarity of justice is compensation<br />

and equability, and finding this to exist in numbers, they said<br />

that the first evenly-even number is justice. For they asserted<br />

that which is first in things which have the same relation, to be<br />

especially that which it is said to be. But the tetrad is this<br />

number, because since it is the first square, it is divided into<br />

even numbers, and is even. The tetrad also was called by the

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