I'm counting on you to explain everything calmly.
It is perfectly possible to imagine a universe in which any act of counting by a being in it annihilated some members of the class counted during the time and only during the time of its continuance.
The Crusades had sprung from the policy of a theocratic government counting on the motive of otherworldliness; they had helped in their course to overthrow that motive, and with it the government which it had made possible.
It is only recently that the succession of processes which is involved in any act of counting has been seen to be irrelevant to the idea of number.
