Chapter 38.—The Science of
Numbers Not Created, But Only Discovered, by Man.
56. Coming now to the science of
number, it is clear to the dullest apprehension that this was not
created by man, but was discovered by investigation. For, though
Virgil could at his own pleasure make the first syllable of
Italia long, while the ancients pronounced it short, it is not
in any man’s power to determine at his pleasure that three times
three are not nine, or do not make a square, or are not the triple
of three, nor one and a half times the number six, or that it is
not true that they are not the double of any number because odd
numbers have no
half. Whether, then, numbers are considered in themselves, or as
applied to the laws of figures, or of sounds, or of other motions, they have fixed laws which were not made by man, but which the acuteness of ingenious men brought to light.
57. The man, however, who puts so
high a value on these things as to be inclined to boast himself one
of the learned, and who does not rather inquire after the source
from which those things which he perceives to be true derive their
truth, and from which those others which he perceives to be
unchangeable also derive their truth and unchangeableness, and who, mounting up from bodily appearances to the mind of man, and finding that it too is changeable (for it is sometimes instructed, at other times uninstructed), although it holds a middle place between the unchangeable truth above it and the changeable things beneath it, does not strive to make all things redound to the praise and love of the one God from whom he knows that all things have their being;—the man, I say, who acts in this way may seem to be learned, but wise he cannot in any sense be deemed.