His first stimulus, I think, was the displeasure of the thirty- three eastern requiring two signs and three words, rather than a single word and a single sign. Then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he said (for example) Maximo Perez, instead of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad, other numbers were Luis Melian Lafinur, Olimar, sulfur, clubs, whales, gas boiler, Napoleon, AgustÃn de Vedia. Instead of five hundred, say nine.
Each word had a particular sign, a kind of brand, the last were very complicated ... I tried to explain that this rhapsody of unconnected was precisely the opposite of a numbering system. I told him that 365 was to say three hundreds, six tens, five units: an analysis that does not exist in the numbers "The Timothy Black" or "blanket of flesh." Funes did not understand me or would not understand.
In "Funes the memoirist"
Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges
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