Philosophie des hautes sciences

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...which is included in the Etteilla or The Art of Reading Cards original: "Art de tirer les Cartes", third edition, from the same Booksellers.

How could one not admit properties in numbers, since they are given to forms, which exist only through numbers? If one answers that forms offer their properties to the senses, can one not reply much like what we have just said, that it is numerical quantities that give forms and consequently dimensions, weight, etc.? But let us not attach ourselves too much to Physics, which in High Science only ever offers principles of its own kind, and from which only vulgar Art and Science result.

It is not a question here of faith, which belongs to Religion and pertains to the celestial to approach the divine; but of intellectual Science, to go to the celestial and conceive of divine works.

In the rigorous sense, High Science is not a moral metaphysics...

Etteilla, Art of Reading Cards, numbers, forms, High Science, intellectual Science

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...it is a Science proper for performing wonders by knowing the intelligent springs of Nature through the paths of physics and metaphysics.

To know well the rings of our Universe, to let not even the most imperceptible escape, to chain every object to its wheels, to seize the present friction, to develop the chain of causes and effects: this is to subject oneself, for the sake of success, to the divine Plato, to Ezekiel the Prophet, to Homer, the greatest genius, and to the lessons of the Author. Yes, everything depends on friction, more or less considerable. Let us see the letters.

Letters are formed from the circle, the square, the triangle, curved or straight lines, and the point; in a word, copied from the external forms of Nature, not only regarding their figures, but regarding what they are in themselves as letters. This is not the same for numbers, whose

Science, Nature, Plato, Ezekiel, Homer, letters, circle, square, triangle