ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS. 65 



with extraordinary attributes, and applying them 

 by very strange and forced analogies. Thus the 

 number Four, to which they gave the name of 

 Tetractys, was held to be the most perfect number, 

 and was conceived to correspond to the human 

 soul, in some way which appears to be very imper- 

 fectly understood by the commentators of this phi- 

 losophy. 



It has been observed by a distinguished modern 

 scholar 88 , that the place which Pythagoras ascribed 

 to his numbers is intelligible only by supposing that 

 he confounded, first a numerical unit with a geo- 

 metrical point, and then this with a material atom. 

 But this criticism appears to place systems of phy- 

 sical philosophy under requisitions too severe. If 

 all the essential properties and attributes of things 

 were fully represented by the relations of number, 

 the philosophy which supplied such an explanation 

 of the universe, might well be excused from ex- 

 plaining also that existence of objects which is dis- 

 tinct from the existence of all their qualities and 

 properties. The Pythagorean love of numerical 

 speculations might have been combined with the 

 doctrine of atoms, and the combination might have 

 led to results well worth notice. But so far as we 

 are aware, no such combination was attempted in 

 the ancient schools of philosophy; and perhaps 

 we of the present day are only just beginning to 

 perceive, through the disclosures of chemistry and 



28 Thirl wall's Hist. Gr. ii. 142. 

 VOL. I. F 



