For instance, man has been able to create units and to give an equal weight and value to bits of gold.

Well, take the ducat of the rich man and the ducat of the poor man to a money-changer and they are rated exactly equal, but to the mind of the thinker one is of greater importance than the other; one represents a month of comfort, the other an ephemeral caprice.

Two and two, therefore, only make four through a false conception.
"Again: fraction does not exist in Nature, where what you call a fragment is a finished whole.

Does it not often happen (have you not many proofs of it ?) that the hundredth part of a substance is stronger than what you term the whole of it?
If fraction does not exist in the Natural Order, still less shall we find it in the Moral Order, where ideas and sentiments may be as varied as the species of the Vegetable kingdom and yet be always whole.

The theory of fractions is therefore another signal instance of the servility of your mind.
"Thus Number, with its infinite minuteness and its infinite expansion, is a power whose weakest side is known to you, but whose real import escapes your perception.