ato derives the
knowledge of ideas by abstraction and cutting away of body, leading
us by mathematical discipline from arithmetic to geometry, thence
to astronomy, and placing harmony above them all. For things become
geometrical by the accession of magnitude to quantity; solid, by the
accession of profundity to magnitude; astronomical, by the accession
of motion to solidity; harmonical, by the accession of sound to motion.
Take then sound from moving bodies, motion from solids, profundity from
superficies, magnitude from quantity, we then reach pure intelligible
ideas, which have no difference among themselves as regards the one
single intelligible essence. For unity makes no number unless joined by
the infinite binary; then it makes a number. And thence we proceed
to points, thence to lines, from them to superficies, and solids, and
bodies, and to the qualities of the bodies so and so affected. Now the
reason is the only criterion of intelligibles; and the understanding
is the reason in the mathematics, where intelligibles appear as if in
mirrors. But as to the knowledge of bodies, because of their multitude,
Nature has given us five powers or distinctions of senses; nor are
all bodies discerned by them, many escaping sense by reason of their
smallness. And though every one of us consists of a body and soul, yet
the hegemonic and intellectual faculty is small, being hid in the huge
mass of flesh. And the case is the same in the universe, as to sensible
and intelligible. For intelligibles are the principles of bodily things,
but everything is greater than the principle whence it came.

Yet, on the contrary, some will say that, by comparing sensibles with
intelligibles, we match things mortal with divine, in some measure; for
God is in intelligibles. Besides, the thing contained is ever less than
the containing, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible in
the intelligible. For God, having placed the soul in the middle, hath
extended it through all, and hath covered it all round with bodies.
The soul is invisible, and cannot be perceived by any of the senses, as
Plato says in his Book of Laws; therefore every man must die, but the
world shall never die. For mortality and dissolution surround every one
of our vital faculties. The case is quite otherwise in the world;
for the corporeal part, contained in the middle by the more noble and
unalterable principle, is ever preserved. And a body is said to
be without