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Further, how are we to combine the beliefs that the attributes
of number, and number itself, are causes of what exists and happens in
the heavens both from the beginning and now, and that there is no
other number than this number out of which the world is composed? When
in one particular region they place opinion and opportunity, and, a
little above or below, injustice and decision or mixture, and
allege, as proof, that each of these is a number, and that there
happens to be already in this place a plurality of the extended bodies
composed of numbers, because these attributes of number attach to
the various places,-this being so, is this number, which we must
suppose each of these abstractions to be, the same number which is
exhibited in the material universe, or is it another than this?
Plato says it is different; yet even he thinks that both these
bodies and their causes are numbers, but that the intelligible numbers
are causes, while the others are sensible.
9
Let us leave the Pythagoreans for the present; for it is enough to
have touched on them as much as we have done. But as for those who
posit the Ideas as causes, firstly, in seeking to grasp the causes
of the things around us, they introduced others equal in number to
these, as if a man who wanted to count things thought he would not
be able to do it while they were few, but tried to count them when
he had added to their number
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