VI
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Poincaré, Henri and Halsted, George Bruce
The definitions of number are very numerous and very different; I forego the enumeration even of the names of their authors. We should not be astonished that there are so many. If one among them was satisfactory, no new one would be given. If each new philosopher occupying himself with this question has thought he must invent another one, this was because he was not satisfied with those of his predecessors, and he was not satisfied with them because he thought he saw a petitio principii.
I have always felt, in reading the writings devoted to this problem, a profound feeling of discomfort; I was always expecting to run against a petitio principii, and when I did not immediately perceive it, I feared I had overlooked it.
This is because it is impossible to give a definition without using a sentence, and difficult to make a sentence without using a number word, or at least the word several, or at least a word in the plural. And then the declivity is slippery and at each instant there is risk of a fall into petitio principii.
I shall devote my attention in what follows only to those of these definitions where the petitio principii is most ably concealed.