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ARABIC NUMERALS AND CIPHER.

Will you suffer me to add some further remarks on the subject of the
Arabic numerals and cipher; as neither the querists nor respondents seem
to have duly appreciated the immense importance of the step taken by
introducing the use of a cipher. I would commence with observing, that
we know of no people tolerably advanced in civilisation, whose system of
notation had made such little progress, beyond that of the mere savage,
as the Romans. The rudest savages could make upright scratches on the
face of a rock, and set them in a row, to signify units; and as the
circumstance of having ten fingers has led the people of every nation to
give a distinct name to the number ten and its multiples, the savage
would have taken but a little step when he invented such a mode of
expressing tens as crossing his scratches, thus X. His ideas, however,
enlarge, and he makes three scratches, thus [C with square sides], to
express 100. Generations of such vagabonds as founded Rome pass away,
and at length some one discovers that, by using but half the figure for
X, the number 5 may be conjectured to be meant. Another calculator
follows {434} up this discovery, and by employing [C with square sides],
half the figure used for 100, he expresses 50. At length the rude man
procured a better knife, with which he was enabled to give a more
graceful form to his [C with square sides], by rounding it into C; then
two such, turned different ways, with a distinguishing cut between them,
made CD, to express a thousand; and as, by that time, the alphabet was
introduced, they recognised the similarity of the form at which they had
thus arrived to the first letter of _Mille_, and called it M, or 1000.
The half of this DC was adopted by a ready analogy for 500. With that
discovery the invention of the Romans stopped, though they had recourse