"Whatever to imperfect natures appears difficult and arduous in obtaining the true knowledge of the gods, the mathematical reasons render, by their images, credible, manifest, and certain. Thus, in numbers, they indicate the significations of super-essential properties, but they evince the powers of intellectual figures, in those figures which fall under cogitation. Hence it is, that Plato, by mathematical forms teaches us many and admirable sentences concerning the gods, and the philosophy of the Pythagoreans; using these as veils, conceals from vulgar inspection the discipline of divine sentences. For such is the whole of the Sacred and Divine Discourse, that of Philolaus in his Bacchics, and the universal method of the Pythagoric narration concerning the Gods. But it especially refers to the contemplation of nature, since it discloses the order of those reasons by which the universe is fabricated, and that proportion which binds, as Timæus says, whatever the world contains, in union and consent; besides it conciliates in amity things mutually opposing each other, and gives convenience and consent to things mutually disagreeing, and exhibits to our view simple and primary elements, from which the universe is composed, on every side comprehended by commensurability and equality, because it receives convenient figures in its proportions, and numbers proper to every production, and finds out their revolutions and renovations, by which we are enabled to reason concerning the best origin, and the contrary dissolution of particulars. In consequence of this, as it appears to me, Timaeus discloses the contemplation concerning the nature of the universe, by mathematical names, adorns the origin of the elements with numbers and figures, referring to these their powers, passions, and energies; and esteeming as well the acuteness as the obtruseness of angles, the levity of sides, or contrary powers, and their multitude and paucity to be the cause of the all-various mutation of the elements."