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560 SWEDENBORG AS A MAN OF SCIENCE. [Doc. 199.
any kind could be detected. I confess that I have never been
able to understand how by mere reflection, and without em
ploying the customary mode of algebraical computation, such
things could be wrought out. It seemed as if His Majesty,
by improving the opportunity of coping in these matters with
the celebrated mechanician and mathematician Christopher
Polhem, Councillor of Commerce, whom he knew to be a
better judge of these things than any one else present
desired to sharpen his intellect and the penetration he
possessed by nature and had acquired by cultivating his native
talent.
There was a particular object and point given to this
learned sport, which point constitutes the burden of what I
desire to have the honour of communicating to you ; since no
one else is able to give you such a detailed account of it.
One day the conversation touched, among other things in
mathematics, upon arithmetic and the method of counting,
when it was stated that the usual method, which is now
almost everywhere adopted, accomplishes a period at each
number ten, so that the single numbers are continued until
ten is reached, when two numbers are employed which are
continued until the second number reaches ten, when three
numbers are introduced ; it was further stated that the cause
of this was that in the beginning, before any written numbers
were in use, the common and simple people used their fingers
in counting; that this seems undoubtedly to have been the
first method of counting, and that it is still employed by the
simple and unlearned. In the course of time, however, when
the world accumulated more and more empirical knowledge,
and commenced its reduction into sciences, the same general
method of counting was committed by the pen to paper, and
figures were introduced which were to signify 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c.;
the old habit, however, was retained, and thus the method which
originated in counting with the fingers became established
the single numbers accordingly were continued till ten, then
a progression was made with two numbers until one hundred,
all changes being reserved to each multiple with ten.
His Majesty took occasion here to observe, that if such
had not been the origin of our method of counting, another
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