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_, _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 proceeded, that now our numeral words are but ten, in any nation, and in some but five; and then they begin again. And he that can tell ten, if he recite them out of order, will lose himself, and not know when he has done. Much less will he be able to add, and subtract, and perform all other operations of arithmetic. So that without words there is no possibility of reckoning of numbers; much less of magnitudes, of swiftness, of force, and other things, the reckonings whereof are necessary to the being, or well-being of mankind. When two names are joined together into a consequence, or affirmation, as thus, _a man is a living creature_; or thus, _if he be a man, he is a living creature_; if the latter name, _living creature_, signify all that the former name _man_ signifieth, then the affirmation, or consequence, is _true_; otherwise _false_. For _true_ and _false_ are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither _truth_ nor _falsehood_; _error_ there may be, as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been; but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth. [Sidenote: Necessity of definitions.] Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs, the more he struggles the more belimed. And therefore in geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind, men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations they call _definitions_, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.