The number one, they argued, is the generator of numbers and the number of reason; the number two is the first even or female number, the number of opinion; three is the first true male number, the number of harmony, being composed of unity and diversity; four is the number of justice or retribution, indicating the squaring of accounts; five is the number of marriage, the union of the first true male and female numbers; and six is the number of creation. Each number had its peculiar attributes. The holiest of all was the number ten, or the tetractys, for it represented the number of the universe, including the sum of all possible dimensions. [See also Heath, 1981, p. 75.] A single point is the generator of dimensions, two points determine a line of dimension one, three points S (not on a line) determine a triangle with area of dimension two, and four points (not in a plane) determine a tetrahedron with volume of dimension three; the sum of the numbers representing all dimensions, therefore, is . . . ten. It is a tribute to the abstraction of Pythagorean mathematics that the veneration of the number ten evidently was not dictated by anatomy of the human hand or foot.”
