tractatus 7

The property whereby multipliers augment their multiplicands, which extends to that of denominators, is like to the manifest of the Godhead - our infinitesimal passions reflect the Beloved's gentility only when observed from collation. One must also note, astute reader, that this selfsame property allows the mind to consider the numbers one employs when counting. One recalls that an ended quantity of cubits describes the dimensions of Noah's Ferry - man's first encounter with Arithmetic. How would God have informed the Sailor of his duties to life on Earth, given the Sailor's due unfamiliarity with numbers? I expect God told the Preserver of arithmetic by saying that a man's elbow to his forefinger measures a length, proceeding that this length remains ended, closed. Then, continuing, that a length adjoined to another can be called 'two' lengths, and so on. A summation parted by a unit is the very essence of counting, and thus the Number is revealed to the Sailor by divinity - that is to say, the aforementioned property. I often think to myself, in admittedly wanting for patent substance, that the Hellenes fell to their geometry first in considering the Temple of the Firmament; that the posture of the Great Bear toward the Lodestar developed Euclid's definition of a line.