Why, then, should not some of these
numbers be squares, some cubes, and some equal, others double? There
is no reason why they should not, and indeed they must move within
these limits, since all things were assumed to share in number. And it
was assumed that things that differed might fall under the same
number. Therefore if the same number had belonged to certain things,
these would have been the same as one another, since they would have
had the same form of number; e.g. sun and moon would have been the
same. But why need these numbers be causes? There are seven vowels,
the scale consists of seven strings, the Pleiades are seven, at
seven animals lose their teeth (at least some do, though some do not),
and the champions who fought against Thebes were seven. Is it then
because the number is the kind of number it is, that the champions
were seven or the Pleiad consists of seven stars? Surely the champions
were seven because there were seven gates or for some other reason,
and the Pleiad we count as seven, as we count the Bear as twelve,
while other peoples count more stars in both. Nay they even say that
X, Ps and Z are concords and that because there are three concords,
the double consonants also are three. They quite neglect the fact that
there might be a thousand such letters; for one symbol might be
assigned to GP. But if they say that each of these three is equal to
two of the other letters, and no other is so, and if the cause is that
there are three parts of the mouth and one letter is in each applied
to sigma, it is for this reason that there are only three, not because
the concords are three; since as a matter of fact the concords are
more than three, but of double consonants there cannot be more.
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