Wherefore Solomon also says, that before heaven, and earth, and all existences, Wisdom had arisen in the Almighty; the participation of which--that which is by power, I mean, not that by essence--teaches a man to know by apprehension things divine and human. Having reached this point, we must mention these things by the way; since the discourse has turned on the seventh and the eighth. For the eighth may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth, and the latter properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of work. For the creation of the world was concluded in six days. For the motion of the sun from solstice to solstice is completed in six months--in the course of which, at one time the leaves fall, and at another plants bud and seeds come to maturity. And they say that the embryo is perfected exactly in the sixth month, that is, in one hundred and eighty days in addition to the two and a half, as Polybus the physician relates in his book _On the Eighth Month_, and Aristotle the philosopher in his book _On Nature_. Hence the Pythagoreans, as I think, reckon six the perfect number, from the creation of the world, according to the prophet, and call it Meseuthys[1150] and Marriage, from its being the middle of the even numbers, that is, of ten and two. For it is manifestly at an equal distance from both. And as marriage generates from male and female, so six is generated from the odd number three, which is called the masculine number, and the even number two, which is considered the feminine. For twice three are six. Such, again, is the number of the most general motions, according to which all origination takes place--up, down, to the right, to the left, forward, backward. Rightly, then, they reckon the number seven motherless and childless, interpreting the Sabbath, and figuratively expressing the nature of the rest, in which “they neither marry nor are given in marriage any more.”[1151] For neither by taking from one number and adding to another of those within ten is seven produced; nor when added to any number within the ten does it make up any of them. And they call eight a cube, counting the fixed sphere along with the seven revolving ones, by which is produced “the great year,” as a kind of period of recompense of what has been promised.