Marin Mersenne wrote: "The order of the Consonances is natural, and... the way we count them, starting from unity up to the number six and beyond is founded in nature." However, to quote Carl Dahlhaus, "the interval-distance of the natural-tone-row [ overtones ] [...], counting up to 20, includes everything from the octave to the quarter tone, (and) useful and useless musical tones. The natural-tone-row [harmonic series] justifies everything, that means, nothing."