"THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES":
by H. Coryn, M. D., M. R. C. S.
HEGEL, commenting upon the Pythagorean doctrine of number as the basis of all things says:
Numbers have been much used as the expression of ideas. This, on one side, has a look of depth. For, that another meaning is implied in them than they immediately present, is seen at once; but how much is implied in them is known neither to him who proposes, nor by him who tries to understand.... The more obscure the thoughts, the deeper they seem; the thing is, that what is most essential, but also what is hardest, namely, the expression of one's self in definite notions—is precisely what the proposer spares himself.
Upon which Stirling remarks:
But the curious point is that Hegel himself adopts this very numerical symbolism, so far as it suits the system! It is only, indeed, when that agreement fails, that the agreement of Hegel fails also. The moment it does fail, however, his impatience breaks out. The one, the two, the three, he contentedly, even warmly and admiringly accepts, nay, "as far as five," he says, "there may well be something like a thought in numbers, but on from six there are simply arbitrary determinations!"
Especially, said Hegel, there is meaning in three, the Trinity. The Trinity is only unintelligible when considered as three separate units; its divine meaning appears when we take it as a whole.
It would be a strange thing if there were no sense in what for two thousand years has been the holiest Christian idea.
It would be stranger if one of the profoundest thinkers that ever lived, a teacher whose grandeur of character made him almost an object of worship to his pupils, had selected his symbols to "spare himself" the labor of clear conception (or had let them conceal from himself the confusion of his own thought). According to Hegel we must respectfully see philosophy in the Christian Trinity; in the Pythagorean Dekad, none.