Making use of these discourses, they think to deceive as many as give heed to the astrologers, seeking therefrom to set up a religion which appears very different from their assumptions.[199] Wherefore, O beloved,[200] let us shun the trifle-admiring way of the owl. For these things and those like them are dancing and not truth. For the stars do not reveal these things; but men on their own account and for the better distinguishing of certain stars (from the rest) gave them names so that they might be a mark to them. For what likeness have the stars strewn about the heaven to a bear, or a lion, or kids, or a water-carrier, or Cepheus, or Andromeda, or to the Shades named in Hades--for many of these persons and the names of the stars alike came into existence long after the stars themselves--so that the [Sidenote: p. 131.] heretics being struck with the wonder should thus labour by such discourses to establish their own doctrines?[201] 7. _Of the Arithmetical Art._[202] Seeing, however, that nearly all heresy has discovered by the art of arithmetic measures of hebdomads and certain projections of Æons, each tearing the art to pieces in different ways and only changing the names,--but of these (men) Pythagoras came to be teacher who first transmitted to the Greeks such numbers from Egypt--it seems good not to pass over this, but after briefly pointing it out to proceed to the demonstration of the objects of our enquiries. These men were arithmeticians and geometricians to whom especially it seems Pythagoras first supplied the principles (of their arts). And they took the first beginnings (of things), discovered apparently by reason alone, from the numbers which can always proceed to infinity by multiplication and the figures (produced by it). For the beginning of geometry, as may be seen, is an indivisible point; but from that point the generation of the infinite figures from [Sidenote: p. 132.] the point[203] is discovered by the art. For the point when extended[204] in length becomes after extension a line having a point as its limit:[205] and a line when extended in breadth produces a superficies and the limits of the superficies are lines: and a superficies extended in depth becomes a (solid) body:[206] and when this solid is in existence, the nature of the great body is thus wholly founded from the smallest point. And this is what Simon says thus: “The little will be great, being as it were a point; but the great will be boundless,”[207] in imitation of that geometrical point. But the beginning of arithmetic, which includes by combination philosophy, is[208] a number which is boundless and incomprehensible, containing within itself all the numbers capable of coming to infinity by multitude. But the beginning of the numbers becomes by hypostasis the first monad, which is a male unit begetting as does a father all the other numbers. Second comes the dyad, a female number, and the same is called even by the arithmeticians.