The Theology of Arithmetic

VII

PREFACE.

...ting, since it is as it were the lowest part of this science; and so it must also be weighed here that in all matters, in the judgment of the most excellent men, the value of a thing is not how much it profits us, but how great the thing itself is. Therefore, just as we are accustomed to judge things lacking physical mass as far more excellent—inasmuch as they approach more closely to divinity than those things immersed in earthly and bodily thickening—so indeed these theological aspects of arithmetic original Greek: "ταῦτα τὰ τῆς ἀριθμητικῆς θεολογούμενα"; this refers to the Neopythagorean tradition of exploring the mystical and divine properties of numbers. far surpass, in both dignity and treatment, that method of counting and reckoning called logistics logistics: From the Greek logistikē, this refers to the practical art of calculation and accounting, as distinguished from arithmetica, which was the theoretical study of the nature of numbers. by the Greeks.

In these pages, that divine power is explained which Pythagoras and almost all the ancient philosophers attributed to numbers. This arithmetic is therefore useful for interior philosophy, which we understand, according to Aristotle, as metaphysics original Greek: "τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά" (ta meta ta physika), literally meaning "the things after the physics.", and according to Plato, as theology and physics—not to mention here that even the theologians of our own religion, especially the more ancient ones, devoted their efforts to uncovering the secrets of number investigation, almost to the point of superstition. This study, besides the fact that it investigates what is hidden in numbers and concealed in the deeper veins of philosophy, also gave birth to that common art of reckoning, about which, if any necessary utility among mor...