De quaternario animae.
The Soul's Unity in Number
Number reveals that unity always reappears at the fourth step, fittingly expressing the soul's simple, incorporeal essence.
Number itself also teaches us the reason for this progression and regression. Say: 'Three times one makes three.' Say: 'Three times three makes nine.' Say: 'Three times nine makes twenty-seven.' Say: 'Three times twenty-seven makes eighty-one.' Look: at the fourth step unity comes to meet you first, and you'll see the same thing happen if you carry the multiplication all the way to infinity — that unity always stands out at the fourth step. Now most rightly the simple essence of the soul is expressed through unity, which is itself also incorporeal.
Ternary and Quaternary: Soul and Body
The ternary number belongs to the indivisible soul through its middle unity, while the dissoluble quaternary pertains to the body.
The ternary number too is fittingly referred to the soul on account of the indissoluble bond of the middle unity, just as the quaternary number, because it has two middle terms and is therefore dissoluble, properly pertains to the body.
From Monad to Triad: The Soul's First Flowing Forth
The soul's first progression extends from simple essence into a virtual triad of desire, anger, and reason, yet remains wholly present in each power.
Therefore the first progression of the soul is that by which it extends from its simple essence — which is figured in a monad — into a virtual ternary, where through desire it now reaches for one thing, through anger despises another, and through reason distinguishes between the two. And rightly it is said to flow forth from a monad into a triad, because every essence is naturally prior to its own power. Again, that the same unity is found three times over in the multiplying ternary signifies this: that the soul does not consist as a whole in each of its individual powers through parts, but as a whole in each one of them.
One Substance, Many Powers
Reason, anger, and desire are not parts of the soul but one and the same substance named differently according to its powers.
After all, we can't call reason alone, or anger alone, or desire alone, a third part of the soul — since reason is nothing other, and no less in substance, than the soul itself; and anger is nothing other, and no less, than the soul; and desire is nothing other, and no less, than the soul — but one and the same substance takes on different names according to its different powers.
The Soul's Second and Third Progressions
The soul moves from governing the body through nine openings to being scattered outward through the senses into visible things shaped by the solid number twenty-seven.
From this virtual triad it then moves forward in a second progression to the task of governing the body through music, which is made up of nine, because there are nine openings in the human body through which, by a natural balancing, everything by which that same body is quickened and governed flows in and flows out. This order also holds because the soul naturally possesses its own powers before it is joined to the body. But afterward, in the third progression, now poured out beyond itself through the senses toward these visible things — things shaped and directed through twenty-seven (a solid number, extended in three dimensions in the likeness of the body) — it is scattered through endless activities.
Return to Unity: The Fourth Progression
Freed from the body, the soul returns to its original simplicity in the fourth progression, as unity reappears at eighty-one, confirming that after this life's eighty-year limit the soul returns to God.
In the fourth progression, however, freed from the body, it returns to the purity of its own simplicity. And so in the fourth multiplication — where three times twenty-seven reaches eighty-one — unity stands forth clearly at the top, so it's plainly evident that after this life's limit, which is signified by eighty, the soul returns to the unity of its own simplicity, from which it had originally departed when it came down to govern the human body. That the span of eighty naturally marks the limit of human life the prophet declares: 'If,' he says, 'in the strength of them eighty years, and beyond that — labor and sorrow.' Some take this fourfold progression to refer to that 'quaternary of the soul' we spoke of above, and they hold that it is called the quaternary of the soul to distinguish it from the quaternary of the body.
Read the original Latin
Huius quoque progressionis regressionisque rationem ipse etiam numerus docet. dic: "ter unum fiunt tria," dic: "ter tria fiunt novem," dic: "ter novem fiunt viginti septem," dic: "ter viginti septem fiunt octoginta unum." ecce tibi in quarto gradu unitas prima occurrit, idemque evenire videbis, si usque ad infinitum duxeris multiplicationem, ut semper in quarto gradu unitas emineat. rectissime autem simplex animae essentia unitate exprimitur, quae ipsa quoque incorporea est. ternarius quoque propter indissolubile mediae unitatis vinculum congrue ad animam refertur, sicut quaternarius, quia duo media habet ideoque dissolubilis est, proprie ad corpus pertinet. prima igitur progressio animae est qua de simplici essentia sua, quae monade figuratur, in virtualem ternarium se extendit, ubi iam per concupiscentiam aliud appetat, aliud per iram contemnat, per rationem inter utrumque discernat. et recte a monade in triadem profluere dicitur, quia omnis essentia naturaliter prior est potentia sua. rursum, quod eadem unitas in ternario multiplicante ter invenitur, hoc significat, quoniam anima non per partes, sed tota in singulis suis potentiis consistat.
neque enim vel rationem solam vel iram solam vel concupiscentiam solam tertiam partem animae dicere possumus, cum nec aliud, nec minus sit in substantia ratio quam anima, nec aliud, nec minus ira quam anima, nec aliud, nec minus concupiscentia quam anima, sed una eandemque substantia secundum diversas potentias suas diversa sortitur vocabula. deinde a virtuali ternario secunda progressione ad regendam humani corporis musicam descendit, quae novenario componitur, quia novem sunt foramina in humano corpore quibus secundum naturalem contemperantiam influit et effluit omne quo idem corpus vegetatur et regitur. hic quoque ordo est, quia prius naturaliter anima potentias suas habet quam corpori commisceatur. postea autem in tertia progressione per sensus iam extra se profusa ad visibilia haec, quae per viginti septem, qui solidus numerus est et trina dimensione ad similitudinem corporis extenditur, figurantur dispensanda, per infinitas actiones dissipatur. in quarta autem progessione soluta a corpore ad puritatem simplicitatis suae revertitur, ideoque in quarta multiplicatione, ubi ter viginti septem in octoginta unum excrevit, monas in summo apparet, ut evidenter clareat quod anima post huius vitae terminum, qui per octoginta designatur, ad unitatem suae simplicitatis redeat, a qua prius discesserat cum ad humanum corpus regendum descendebat. quod autem in octoginta meta humanae vitae naturaliter consistat, propheta declarat: Si, inquit, in valetudine octoginta anni, et amplius eorum labor et dolor. hanc quadruplam progressionem illum quaternarium animae, de quo supra locuti sumus, quidam intelligendum putant cumque, ad differentiam quaternarii corporis, quaternarium animae appellatum.
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