Since of these principles numbers are by nature the first, and in numbers they seemed to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into being more than in fire and earth and water (such and such a modification of numbers being justice, another being soul and reason, another being opportunity and similarly almost all other things being numerically expressible); since, again, they saw that the attributes and the ratios of the musical scales were expressible in numbers; since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modelled after numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature