4. Therefore demonstrations in numbers the most precise.
The clearness and distinctness of each mode of number
from all others, even those that approach nearest, makes me apt to think that demonstrations in numbers, if they
are not more evident and exact than in extension, yet they are more general in their use, and more determinate in
their application. Because the ideas of numbers are more precise and distinguishable than in extension; where
every equality and excess are not so easy to be observed or measured; because our thoughts cannot in space arrive
at any determined smallness beyond which it cannot go, as an unit; and therefore the quantity or proportion of any
the least excess cannot be discovered; which is clear otherwise in number, where, as has been said, 91 is as
distinguishable from go as from 9000, though 91 be the next immediate excess to 90. But it is not so in extension,
where, whatsoever is more than just a foot or an inch, is not distinguishable from the standard of a foot or an inch;
and in lines which appear of an equal length, one may be longer than the other by innumerable parts: nor can any
one assign an angle, which shall be the next biggest to a right one.
