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There is also a sense in which it has been called Nature, since by being multiplied into itself it ends in itself again. For even as Nature receives wheat in the form of seed and puts it to its use, and creates in the interim many shapes and forms through which she carries out the process of growth to its end, but, to crown all, displays wheat again, and thus presents as her result the beginning at the end of the whole, so in like manner, while the other numbers when raised to a power end in different numbers as the result of the increase, only the numbers five and six, when multiplied by themselves, repeat themselves and preserve their identity. Thus six times six is thirty-six, and five times five is twenty-five; and furthermore, the number six does this but once, and the single instance is when it is squared; but with five this result is obtained in raising it to any power, and it has a unique characteristic, when added to itself, of producing either itself or ten alternatelyThat is, a number ending in 5 or 0. Cf. 429 d, infra. as the addition progresses, and of doing this to infinity, since this number takes its pattern from the primal principle which orders the whole. For as that principle by changes creates a complete universe out of itself, and then in turn out of the universe creates itself again, as HeracleitusDiels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 95, Heracleitus, no. b 90. says, and exchanges fire for all and all for fire, as gold for goods and goods for gold, so, in like manner, the conjunction of five with itself is determined by Nature’s law to produce nothing incomplete or foreign, but it has strictly limited changes; it produces either itself or ten, that is to say, either its own characteristic or the perfect whole.
