Of The Number Six, And The Scale

CHAP. XXI.

OF THE NUMBER SIX, AND THE SCALE.

SIX is a number of perfection, because it is the most perfect in nature, in the whole course of numbers, from one to ten; and it alone is so perfect that in the collection of its parts, it results the same, neither wanting nor abounding;

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for if the parts thereof, viz. the middle, third, and sixth part, which are three, two, one, be gathered together, they perfectly fill up the whole body of six, which perfection all the other numbers want. Hence, by the Pythagorians, it is said to be altogether to be applied to generation and marriage, and is called the scale of the world; for the world is made of the number six--neither doth it abound, nor is defective: hence that is, because the world was finished by God the sixth day; for the sixth day God saw all things which he had made, and they were ¹ very good; therefore the heaven, and the earth, and all the host thereof, were finished. It is also called the number of man, because the sixth day ² man was created. And it is also the number of our redemption; for on the sixth day Christ suffered for our redemption; whence there is a great affinity between the number six and the cross, labour, and servitude. Hence it is commanded in the law, that in six days the manna is to be gathered, and work to be done. Six years the ground was to be sown; and that the Hebrew servant was to serve his master six years. Six days the glory of the Lord appeared upon Mount Sinai, covering it with a cloud. The Cherubims had six wings. Six circles in the firmament: Artic, Antartic, two Tropics, Equinoctial and Ecliptical. Six wandering planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, running through the latitude of the Zodiac on both sides the Ecliptic. There are six substantial qualities in the elements, viz. sharpness, thinness, motion; and the contrary to these--dulness, thickness, and rest. There are six differences of position: upwards, downwards, before, behind, on the right side, and on the left side. There are six natural offices, without which nothing can be, viz. magnitude, colour, figure, interval, standing, motion. Also, a solid figure of any four-square thing hath six superfices. There are six tones of all harmony, viz. five tones, and two half tones which make one tone, which is the sixth.

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THE SCALE OF THE NUMBER SIX.

Footnotes

116:1 The sixth day, the Eternal Wisdom pronounced all things created by his divine hand to be "very good."

116:2 Hence arose the mystery of the number of the beast, six hundred three score and six, being the number of a man--DCLXVI.