332 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
sired to know. Every body, however, knows that the note si per- 
petually aspires to climb, and that it is written by a 7 in the mu- 
sical notation of Rousseau. I should never end were I to de- 
scribe all the passional properties of the number 7, still less those 
of the number 12, also so celebrated in history, and the cipher of 
simple harmony. 
Allow us one observation to simplists in science, to enable them, 
to put their hands on one of the most recent deceptions of their in- 
fallible science and show them that passional analogy is the true 
and only compass of science, and that shipwreck awaits every au- 
dacious navigator who does not consult it. 
Modern science has made noise enough with the invention of its 
metrical system, with the uniformity of its weights and measures ! 
Proud of the results of this new method, it has rung a peal on 
the occasion with the little bells of its collar. 
Rejoice thyself, poor science, proud in thy rags, and above all, 
be quick about it, for the days of barbarous in'< ‘^u.tions pass, and 
thy decimal system is a crudity unworthy of .cmce and of the 
Convention ; and from the hour when the light of passional arith- 
metic shall have beamed through two or three learned brains, they 
will be ashamed of thy work and will upseh>thy metrical scaffold- 
ing into the dust, and make an auto-de-fe of thy metres and thy 
double decalitres. Before forty years- — I foretell it — tliy barba- 
rous system of decimal numeration will be destroyed like Nineveh, 
and the system of passional numeration will rise glorious upon its 
ruins ! 
See now on what progress depends. Had not a fatal illusion 
misled the learned of the Convention in their pursuit of this deci- 
mal numeration, if, instead of idly abandoning a duodecimal sys- 
tem which they had all made to their hands, they had limited 
themselves to modify this and to complete it by adding to the scale 
of the ten characters already known, the two notes wanting to make 
twelve; had tlmy transferred the zero from the tenth term to the 
twelfth, so that the number one hundred and forty-four, square of 
twelve, should in future be written as one hundred, square of ten . . . 
they would have built an admirable work of art and of science — 
they would have worked for eternity ! 
