A large portion of the Egyptian philosophy and religion seems to have been constructed almost wholly upon the science of numbers; and we are assured by Kircher that everything in nature was explained on this principle alone. The Pythagoreans had so high an opinion of it, that they considered it to be the origin of all things, and thought knowledge of numbers to be equivalent to knowledge of God. The founder of the sect received his instructions in this science from the Egyptian priests; who taught him that, while the monad possesses the nature of the efficient cause, the dyad is merely a...