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Of this number the soul of man is composed; for mind, knowledge, opinion, and sense are the four that complete the soul, from which all sciences, all arts, all rational faculties derive themselves. For what our mind perceives, it perceives after the manner of a thing that is one, the soul itself being a unity; as for instance, a multitude of persons are not the object of our sense nor are comprehended by us, for they are infinite; our understanding gives the general notion of a man, in which all individuals agree. The number of individuals is infinite; the generic or specific nature of all being is a unit, or to be apprehended as one only thing; from this one conception we give the genuine measures of all existence, and therefore we affirm that a certain class of beings are rational and discoursive beings. But when we come to give the nature of a horse, it is that animal which neighs; and this being common to all horses, it is manifest that the understanding, which hath such like conceptions, is in its nature unity. The number which is called the infinite binary must needs be science; in every demonstration or belief belonging to science, and in every syllogism, we draw that conclusion which is the question doubted of, from those propositions which are by all granted, by which means another proposition is demonstrated. The comprehension of these we call knowledge; for which reason science is the binary number. But opinion is the ternary; for that rationally follows from comprehension. The objects of opinion are many things, and the ternary number denotes a multitude, as Thrice happy Grecians; for which reason Pythagoras admits the ternary. This sect of philosophers is called the Italic, by reason Pythagoras opened his school in Italy; his hatred of the tyranny of Polycrates enforced him to leave his native country Samos.
