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This observation is extended by a consideration of the seven different

kinds of number by which, as if by seven steps, we ascend to God. Augustine

shows this in his book "On the True Religion" and in the sixth book "On

Music," wherein he assigns the differences of the numbers as they mount

step by step from sensible things to the Maker of all things, so that God

may be seen in all.

For he says that numbers are in bodies and especially in sounds and words,

and he calls these "sonorous." Some are abstracted from these and received

into our senses, and these he calls "heard." Some proceed from the soul

into the body, as appears in gestures and bodily movements, and these he

calls "uttered." Some are in the pleasures of the senses which arise from

attending to the species which have been received, and these he calls

"sensual." Some are retained in the memory, and these he calls remembered.

Some are the bases of our judgments about all these, and these he calls

"judicial," which, as has been said above, necessarily transcend our minds

because they are infallible and incontrovertible. By these there are

imprinted on our minds the "artificial" numbers which Augustine does not

include in this classification because they are connected with the judicial

number from which flow the uttered numbers out of which are created the

numerical forms of those things made by art. Hence, from the highest

through the middles to the lowest, there is an ordered descent. Thence do

we ascend step by step from the sonorous numbers by means of the uttered,

the sensual, and the remembered.

Since, therefore, all things are beautiful and in some way delightful, and

beauty and delight do not exit apart from proportion, and proportion is

primarily in number, it needs must be that all things are rhythmical

("numerosa"). And for this reason number is the outstanding exemplar in the

mind of the Maker, and in things it is the outstanding trace leading to

wisdom. Since this is most evident to all and closest to God, it leads most

directly to God as if by the seven differentiae. It causes Him to be known

in all corporeal and sensible thing while we apprehend the rhythmical,

delight in rhythmical proportions, and though the laws of rhythmical

proportions judge irrefragably.