strings at all. It has been similarly imagined that certain combinations of numbers, which were found to prevail in some natural phenomena, must run through the whole of nature: as that there must be four elements, because there are four possible combinations of hot and cold, wet and dry; that there must be seven planets, because there were seven metals, and even because there were seven days of the week. Kepler himself thought that there could be only six planets, because there were only five regular solids. With these we may class the reasonings, so common in the speculations of the ancients, founded on a supposed perfection in nature; meaning by nature the customary order of events as they take place of themselves without human interference. This also is a rude guess at an analogy supposed to pervade all phenomena, however dissimilar. Since what was thought to be perfection appeared to obtain in some phenomena, it was inferred (in opposition to the plainest evidence) to obtain in all. "We always suppose that which is better to take place in nature, if it be possible," says Aristotle; and the vaguest and most heterogeneous qualities being confounded together under the notion of being better, there was no limit to the wildness of the inferences. Thus, because the heavenly bodies were "perfect," they must move in circles and uniformly. For "they" (the Pythagoreans) "would not allow," says Geminus,(259) "of any such disorder among divine and eternal things, as that they should sometimes move quicker and sometimes slower, and sometimes stand still; for no one would tolerate such anomaly in the movements even of a man, who was decent and orderly. The occasions of life, however, are often reasons for men going quicker or slower; but in the incorruptible nature of the stars, it is not possible that any cause can be alleged of quickness or slowness." It is seeking an argument of analogy very far, to suppose that the stars must observe the rules of decorum in gait and carriage prescribed for themselves by the long-bearded philosophers satirized by Lucian.
As late as the Copernican controversy it was urged as an argument in favor of the true theory of the solar system, that it placed the fire, the noblest element, in the centre of the universe. This was a remnant of the notion that the order of nature must be perfect, and that perfection consisted in conformity to rules of precedency in dignity, either real or conventional. Again, reverting to numbers: certain numbers were perfect, therefore those numbers must obtain in the great phenomena of nature. Six was a perfect number, that is, equal to the sum of all its factors; an additional reason why there must be exactly six planets. The Pythagoreans, on the other hand, attributed perfection to the number ten; but agreed in thinking that the perfect number must be somehow realized in the heavens; and knowing only of nine heavenly bodies, to make up the enumeration, they asserted "that there was an antichthon, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun, invisible to us."(260) Even Huygens was persuaded that when the number of the heavenly bodies had reached twelve, it could not admit of any further increase. Creative power could not go beyond that sacred number.
Some curious instances of false analogy are to be found in the arguments of the Stoics to prove the equality of all crimes, and the equal wretchedness of all who had not realized their idea of perfect virtue. Cicero, toward the end of his Fourth Book, De Finibus, states some of these as follows: "Ut, inquit, in fidibus plurimis, si nulla earum ita contenta numeris sit, ut concentum
