Language and Counting

``But the use of words in registring our thoughts, is in nothing so  evident as in Numbering. A naturall foole that could never learn by  heart the order of numerall words, as One, Two, and Three, may observe  every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can  never know what houre it strikes. And it seems, there was a time when  those names of number were not in use; and men were fayn 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 numerall 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 himselfe, and not know when he has done: Much lesse will he be  able to add, and substract, and performe all other operations of  Arithmetique. So that without words, there is no possibility of  reckoning of Numbers; much lesse of Magnitudes, of Swiftnesse, of Force,  and other things, the reckonings whereof are necessary to the being, or  well-being of man-kind. ''

Leviathan