Augustine on facial expressions

Natural signs are those which make another thing known without any will or desire of signifying anything, the way that smoke signifies fire. For smoke does not signify because it wishes to; rather, through observation and contemplation of things experienced it is known that where smoke can be seen, there is fire beneath it. The footprint of a passing animal pertains to this genus. And the affections of a sad or angry soul are signified in the face independently of the sad or angry person's will. And any other movement of the soul may be given away on the face's indication, whatever our will in the matter.

On Christian Teaching 2.I.2, ca. 397 (rev. 427)

Augustine on number II

"The third class of mental images has mostly to do with numbers and dimensions, which exist partly in the nature of things (as when an image of the whole world springs to the mind of one who has just learned its shape), and partly in the study of geometrical figures, musical rhythms, and the infinite variety of numbers. Though I affirm that a true understanding of these things is possible, it is also true that they engender false images which are hard for reason to overcome. What is more, the very practice of dialectic is vulnerable to this evil, since in our divisions and conclusions we use mental images the way we might use counting-pebbles."

"The mind dwells on a mixture of whatever nature endows with imitable form, including things which may never have been perceived externally. But although the mind is present in everything, the origin of images is not in the mind. This is nothing to be surprised at, given that (despite our best efforts) we are not cognizant of our bodily expression and complexion before, in the throes of joy, displeasure and other such movements of the soul, we set their images in our faces. What is worthy of your surprise and contemplation is the way expressions are made to follow affections by the action of hidden numbers in the soul, independent of any drummed-up image of a bodily form. From this I hope that, when you perceive how many of the soul's movements are free of those images into which you are now inquiring, you will understand that the least likely movement by which [true knowledge of] a given body may come to the mind is meditation on sensible forms, which I do not believe the mind can experience without using the body and its senses."

Letter 7 (to Nebridius):4, 7, ca. 387/8.

Viermolengang Tweemanspolder

Augustine on number

"I find it very strange that most people esteem wisdom but consider number to be of little value, when clearly they are one and the same thing. True, Scripture says that wisdom 'reacheth from one end to another mightily, and sweetly doth she order all things.'. But perhaps the power that reaches mightily from one end to the other is number, and what is properly called wisdom is that which orders all things sweetly, with both powers belonging to wisdom as a whole.

"Wisdom gave numbers to all things, no matter the lowliness or loftiness of their station within the material realm. While bodies (being lofty) of course have number, the power to be wise was not given to them all, nor to all souls. But to rational beings wisdom gave enough to serve as an interior seat, from which to 'order all things' endowed with number, no matter how lowly. Because our judgments on bodies are made with the same ease as our judgments on things ordered lowlier than us, the numbers of which we perceive stamped into them, we therefore reckon numbers themselves to be beneath us, and consider them of little value. But when we begin to look above ourselves as well as below, we find that numbers transcend our minds and are permanently fixed in truth itself."

On Free Choice of the Will 2.II.30-1 (ca. 394/5 CE)

Philolaus of Croton

“All things which are known have number. For it is impossible that anything at all be recognized or known, without this.”

"Number has two types all its own, odd and even... And of both types there are many forms, which each particular thing indicates [autò sēmaínei]."

44B4-5 (DK)

A simile of Empedocles

As when painters -- men about their craft
through craft instructed -- fill in upright panels
and lay their hands to multicolored substances,
in concert mixing more of some and less of others,
and arrange them into forms like unto all things,
putting forth trees and men along with women
and beasts with birds and fish nursed on water
and, superlative in honor, gods of long tenure:
Go therefore with wits ungulled into believing the source of mortal things
is any different, no matter how unutterably many come into view.
Instead, take this on divine authority for certain knowledge.

Fragment 31B21 (DK)

A story of the painter Apelles

They say that when he was painting a horse, he became so frustrated in his wish to depict the horse's lather that he flung the sponge he used for wiping pigments off his brushes—and that its impact on the picture replicated the lather of a horse.

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.28