=1429.= They [the Greeks] speculated and theorized under a lively persuasion that a Science of every part of nature was possible, and was a fit object for the exercise of a man’s best faculties; and they were speedily led to the conviction that such a science must clothe its conclusions in the language of mathematics. This conviction is eminently conspicuous in the writings of Plato.... Probably no succeeding step in the discovery of the Laws of Nature was of so much importance as the full adoption of this pervading conviction, that there must be Mathematical Laws of Nature, and that it is the business of Philosophy to discover these Laws. This conviction continues, through all the succeeding ages of the history of the science, to be the animating and supporting principle of scientific investigation and discovery. --WHEWELL, W. _History of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. 1, bk. 2, chap. 3._ =1430.= For to pass by those Ancients, the wonderful _Pythagoras_, the sagacious _Democritus_, the divine _Plato_, the most subtle and very learned _Aristotle_, Men whom every Age has hitherto acknowledged as deservedly honored, as the greatest Philosophers, the Ring-leaders of Arts; in whose Judgments how much these Studies [mathematics] were esteemed, is abundantly proclaimed in History and confirmed by their famous Monuments, which are everywhere interspersed and bespangled with Mathematical Reasonings and Examples, as with so many Stars; and consequently anyone not in some Degree conversant in these Studies will in vain expect to understand, or unlock their hidden Meanings, without the Help of a Mathematical Key: For who can play well on _Aristotle’s_ Instrument but with a Mathematical Quill; or not be altogether deaf to the Lessons of natural _Philosophy_, while ignorant of _Geometry?_ Who void of (_Geometry_ shall I say, or) _Arithmetic_ can comprehend _Plato’s_ _Socrates_ lisping with Children concerning Square Numbers; or can conceive _Plato_ himself treating not only of the Universe, but the Polity of Commonwealths regulated by the Laws of Geometry, and formed according to a Mathematical Plan?--BARROW, ISAAC. _Mathematical Lectures (London, 1734), pp. 26-27._ =1431.= And Reason now through number, time, and space Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye; And learns from facts compar’d the laws to trace Whose long procession leads to Deity --BEATTIE, JAMES. _The Minstrel, Bk. 2, stanza 47._ =1432.= That Egyptian and Chaldean wisdom mathematical wherewith Moses and Daniel were furnished, ....--HOOKER, RICHARD. _Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. 3, sect. 8._