Page:A discourse upon the origin and foundation of the inequality among mankind (IA discourseuponori00rous).pdf/315

 Pag. 62.

(14.) Plato hewing how neceary the Ideas of dicrete Quantity and its Relations are in the mot trifling Arts, laughs with great Reaon at the Authors of his Age who pretended that Palamedes had invented Numbers at the Siege of Troy, as if, ays he, it was poible that Agamemnon hould not know 'till then how many Legs he had. In fact, every one mut ee how impoible it was that Society and the Arts hould have attained the Degree of Perfection in which they were at the Time of that famous Siege, unles Men had been acquainted with the Ue of Numbers and Calculation: But the Neceity of undertanding Numbers previous to the Acquiition of other Sciences does by no Means help us to account for the Invention of them; the Names of Numbers once known, it is an eay Matter to explain the Meaning of them, and excite the Ideas which thee Names preent; but to invent them, it was neceary, before thee Ideas could be conceived, that Man hould have exercied himelf in conidering Beings merely according to their Eence, and independently of every other Perception; an Abtraction very painful and very