ourselves, as we do bodies with our eyes, nor inside ourselves either as we do the
Book IV 249 being arranged for the making. Nor did he perceive them inside himself in the way that we perceive in our thoughts the appearances of bodies which are not there before our eyes, but which we form in our imaginations from what we see or have seen. So in what way did he perceive these things, so as to arrange them like that? In what way indeed, but that in which he alone is able to?
How we perceive the perfection of the number six
13. And yet we mortals and sinners, whose souls are weighed down by perishable bodies, and whose thoughts, thinking of many things, are pressed down by this earthly dwelling (Wis 9: 15), though even if we had hearts of the purest and the most straightforward of minds, and were already the equals of the holy angels (Lk 20:36), we would not of course know the very substance of God in the way he knows it himself.
7. We too for our part do not perceive this perfection of the number six outside ourselves, as we do bodies with our eyes, nor inside ourselves either as we do the appearances of bodies and the images of visible things, but in an altogether different way. For although something like little material objects may thrust themselves before the eyes of the mind when the composition or the arrange ment or the division of the number six is being thought about, still reason, prevailing over them more effectively from above, does not assent to them, and instead surveys a number's essential virtue from within. This survey enables it to say with absolute assurance that what is called "one" in the series of numbers cannot be divided into any parts, while there are no material bodies that cannot be divided into innumerable parts, and that it would be easier for heaven and earth to pass away,18 constructed though they were in accordance with the number six, than to bring it about that the number six is not completed by its parts. And so the human spirit should always be giving thanks to its creator, by whom it was so created that it could see this which no soul of birds, no soul of beasts can see, though together with us nonetheless they see heaven and earth and the lamps of heaven and the sea and the dry land and all the things that are in them.
1 4. That is why we cannot say that the reason the number six is perfect is that God perfected all his works in six days, but rather that the reason God perfected his works in six days is that six is a perfect number. And so, even if none ofthese existed, it would still be perfect, while unless it were perfect these would not have been completed and perfected in accordance with it.
18. See Mt 5:18; Mk 13:31.