EIGHT is the first cube, that of _two_. NINE is the square of _three_, and represented by the triple triangle. TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially _seven_ and _three_; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras represented it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings. This symbol is sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes of commas or yōds, and in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name of Deity. It is thus arranged: , , , , , , , , , , The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are _ten_ in number, and the same number is that of the Commandments. TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a cube. It is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apostles; of the oxen under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the breast-plate of the high priest. III. THE MASTER. To understand literally the symbols and allegories of Oriental books as to ante-historical matters, is willfully to close our eyes against the Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and commonplace, is the blundering of mediocrity. _All_ religious expression is symbolism; since we can _describe_ only what we _see_, and the true objects of religion are THE SEEN. The earliest instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other religious forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All _words_ have, primarily, a _material_ sense, however they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual _non_-sense. "To retract," for example, is to _draw back_, and when applied to a _statement_, is symbolic, as much so as a picture of an arm drawn back, to express the same thing, would be. The very word "_spirit_" means "_breath,_" from the Latin verb _, breathe_.