MDCCCLXXVIII

mdccclxxviii, i.e. thousand five-hundred hundred hundred hundred fifty ten ten five one one one. the system is therefore essentially a cardinal and grouping one, i.e. it represents a number as the sum of sets of other numbers. it is therefore remarkable that it should now only be used for ordinal purposes, while the hindu system, which is ordinal in its nature, since a single series is constantly repeated, is used almost exclusively for cardinal numbers. this fact seems to illustrate the truth that the counting principle is the fundamental one, to which the interpretation of grouped numbers must ultimately be referred. the normal process of writing the larger numbers on the left is in certain cases modified in the roman system by writing a number in front of a larger one to denote subtraction. thus _four_, originally written