על בריאת העולם ט״זOn the Account of the World's Creation 16
א׳
1[49] There is also another property of the number 4 very marvellous to state and to contemplate with the mind. For this number was the first to show the nature of the solid, the numbers before it referring to things without actual substance. For under the head of 1 what is called in geometry a point falls, under that of 2 a line. For if 1 extend itself, 2 is formed, and if a point extend itself, a line is formed: and a line is length without breadth; if breadth be added, there results a surface, which comes under the category of 3: to bring it to a solid surface needs one thing, depth, and the addition of this to 3 produces 4. The result of all this is that this number is a thing of vast importance. It was this number that has led us out of the realm of incorporeal existence patent only to the intellect, and has introduced us to the conception of a body of three dimensions, which by its nature first comes within the range of our senses.
ב׳
2[50] Anyone who does not understand what I am saying will catch my meaning if he calls to mind a very familiar game. Players with nuts are in the habit of setting out three nuts all on one level and of adding one to these, thus forming a pyramidal figure. The figure of the triangle on the level only reaches the number 3; the added nut produces, in numbers 4, but in figures a pyramid, a body rendered solid by its accession.
ג׳
3[51] In addition to these points we must remember also that first among numbers 4 is a square, made up of equal factors multiplying into one another, a measure of rightness and equality, and that alone among them it is such as to be produced from the same factors whether added or multiplied together, by addition out of 2 and 2, and by multiplication again out of twice 2, thus exhibiting a right fair form of consonance, such as has fallen to none of the other numbers; for example—6, sum as it is of two 3’s, is not (as in the case of 4) produced by their being multiplied together, but a different number, 9, results.
ד׳
4[52] There are several other powers of which 4 has the command, which we shall have to point out in fuller detail in the special treatise devoted to it. Suffice it to add just this, that 4 was made the starting-point of the creation of heaven and the world; for the four elements, out of which this universe was fashioned, issued, as it were from a fountain, from the numeral 4; and, beside this, so also did the four seasons of the year, which are responsible for the coming into being of animals and plants, the year having a fourfold division into winter and spring and summer and autumn.