On Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic

IN NICOMACHI ARITHM. INTROD.

he encompassed the infinite, and in the ordered he included the unordered. He advances through genera and species in an ordered manner, not skipping what follows in sequence, and he includes in one perfect whole those theorems which are carried imperfectly in many. He possesses here also what one would least see existing in him in other books: the concise and the accurate, and along with these, the complete and perfect. He is convoluted, coiled, multi-minded, and fertile, as I believe, because he posits the Pythagorean mathematical studies regarding number as pure. Let it be permitted, however, for anyone who wishes to conjecture about this as they please. But that which must be concluded from all these things is this: if, through all these things, we prefer this man as the most arithmetical, it is reasonable that we therefore posit his entire arithmetical art as it is, not thinking it necessary to bring it forth imperfectly by amputating its preceding parts, nor to rewrite it—for this is superfluous—nor to misappropriate what has been written. For it is an act of the utmost ingratitude to remove from the author the glory that belongs to him. But for this reason, one must not make arguments foreign to the Pythagorean practices; for it is not our intention to speak novelties, but rather the things that seemed correct to the men of old. Whence, neither removing nor adding anything, we set forth the Nicomachean art itself in our discourses.

And that the present treatise may not be incomplete, even in this regard: Pythagoras was the first to name philosophy love of wisdom, and he said it was a yearning and, as it were, a friendship for wisdom, and wisdom the knowledge of the truth in existing things.