‘The manner how speech serveth to the remembrance of the consequence of causes and effects, consisteth in the imposing of names, and the connexion of them. Of names, some are proper, and singular to one only thing; as _Peter_, _John_, _this man_, _this tree_: and some are common to many things; _man_, _horse_, _tree_; every of which though but one name, is nevertheless the name of divers particular things; in respect of all which together, it is called an universal; there being nothing in the world universal but names; for the things named are every one of them individual and singular. One universal name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality, or other accident: and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing only, universals recall any one of those many. By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example: a man that hath no use of speech at all, that is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it: but if another triangle be shown him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent, not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle but only to this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever, and register his invention in these general terms: every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right angles. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; discharges our mental reckoning of time and place; delivers us from all labour of the mind, saving the first, and makes that which was found true here, and now, to be true in all times and places. But the use of words in registering our thoughts, is in nothing so evident as in numbering. A natural fool that could never learn by heart the order of numeral words, as _one_, _two_, and _three_, may observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say _one_, _one_; but can never know what hour it strikes. And it seems, there was a time when those names of number were not in use, and men were fain to apply their fingers of one or both hands to those things they desired to keep account of; and that thence it proceeds, that now our numeral words are but ten, in any nation, and in some but five, and then they begin again.