An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
Thus children, either for want of names to mark the several
progressions of numbers, or not having yet the faculty to collect
scattered ideas into complex ones, and range them in a regular order,
and so retain them in their memories, as is necessary to reckoning, do
not begin to number very early, nor proceed in it very far or steadily,
till a good while after they are well furnished with good store of
other ideas: and one may often observe them discourse and reason pretty
well, and have very clear conceptions of several other things, before
they can tell twenty. And some, through the default of their memories,
who cannot retain the several combinations of numbers, with their
names, annexed in their distinct orders, and the dependence of so long
a train of numeral progressions, and their relation one to another, are
not able all their lifetime to reckon, or regularly go over any
moderate series of numbers. For he that will count twenty, or have any
idea of that number, must know that nineteen went before, with the
distinct name or sign of every one of them, as they stand marked in
their order; for wherever this fails, a gap is made, the chain breaks,
and the progress in numbering can go no further. So that to reckon
right, it is required, (1) That the mind distinguish carefully two
ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition or
subtraction of ONE unit: (2) That it retain in memory the names or
marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number; and
that not confusedly, and at random, but in that exact order that the
numbers follow one another. In either of which, if it trips, the whole
business of numbering will be disturbed, and there will remain only the
confused idea of multitude, but the ideas necessary to distinct
numeration will not be attained to.
8. Number measures all Measurables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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