When, however, encouraged by our ready success in making out the nature

and action of these ruder methods, we turn to the higher art of speech,

and ask how such and such words have come to express such and such

thoughts, we find ourselves face to face with an immense problem, as yet

but in small part solved. The success of investigation has indeed been

enough to encourage us to push vigorously forward in the research, but

the present explorations have not extended beyond corners and patches of

an elsewhere unknown field. Still the results go far to warrant us in

associating expression by gestures and pictures with articulate language

as to principles of original formation, much as men associate them in

actual life by using gesture and word at once. Of course, articulate

speech, in its far more complex and elaborate development, has taken up

devices to which the more simple and rude means of communication offer

nothing comparable. Still, language, so far as its constitution is

understood, seems to have been developed like writing or music, like

hunting or fire-making, by the exercise of purely human faculties in

purely human ways. This state of things by no means belongs exclusively

to rudimentary philological operations, such as the choosing expressive

sounds to name corresponding ideas by. In the higher departments of

speech, where words already existing are turned to account to express

new meanings and shade off new distinctions, we find these ends attained

by contrivances ranging from extreme dexterity down to utter clumsiness.

For a single instance, one great means of giving new meaning to old

sound is metaphor, which transfers ideas from hearing to seeing, from

touching to thinking, from the concrete of one kind to the abstract of

another, and can thus make almost anything in the world help to describe

or suggest anything else. What the German philosopher described as the

relation of a cow to a comet, that both have tails, is enough and more

than enough for the language-maker. It struck the Australians, when they

saw a European book, that it opened and shut like a mussel-shell, and

they began accordingly to call books ‘mussels’ (_mūyūm_). The sight of a

steam engine may suggest a whole group of such transitions in our own

language; the steam passes along ‘fifes’ or ‘trumpets,’ that is, _pipes_

or _tubes_, and enters by ‘folding-doors’ or _valves_, to push a

‘pestle’ or _piston_ up and down in a ‘roller’ or _cylinder_, while the

light pours from the furnace in ‘staves’ or ‘poles,’ that is, in _rays_

or _beams_. The dictionaries are full of cases compared with which such

as these are plain and straightforward. Indeed, the processes by which

words have really come into existence may often enough remind us of the

game of ‘What is my thought like?’ When one knows the answer, it is easy

enough to see what _junketting_ and cathedral _canons_ have to do with

reeds; Latin _juncus_ ‘a reed,’ Low Latin _juncata_, ‘cheese made in a

reed-basket,’ Italian _giuncata_ ‘cream cheese in a rush frail,’ French

_joncade_ and English _junket_, which are preparations of cream, and

lastly _junketting_ parties where such delicacies are eaten; Greek

κάννη, ‘reed, _cane_,’ κανῶν, ‘measure, rule,’ thence _canonicus_, ‘a

clerk under the ecclesiastical rule or canon.’ But who could guess the

history of these words, who did not happen to know these intermediate

links?

Yet there is about this process of derivation a thoroughly human

artificial character. When we know the whole facts of any case, we can

generally understand it at once, and see that we might have done the

same ourselves had it come in our way. And the same thing is true of the

processes of making sound-words detailed in these chapters. Such a view

is, however, in no way inconsistent with the attempt to generalize upon

these processes, and to state them as phases of the development of

language among mankind. If certain men under certain circumstances

produce certain results, then we may at least expect that other men much

resembling these and placed under roughly similar circumstances will

produce more or less like results; and this has been shown over and over

again in these pages to be what really happens. Now Wilhelm von

Humboldt’s view that language is an ‘organism’ has been considered a

great step in philological speculation; and so far as it has led

students to turn their minds to the search after general laws, no doubt

it has been so. But it has also caused an increase of vague thinking and

talking, and thereby no small darkening of counsel. Had it been meant to

say that human thought, language, and action generally, are organic in

their nature, and work under fixed laws, this would be a very different

matter; but this is distinctly not what is meant, and the very object of

calling language an organism is to keep it apart from mere human arts

and contrivances. It was a hateful thing to Humboldt’s mind to ‘bring

down speech to a mere operation of the understanding.’ ‘Man,’ he says,

‘does not so much form language, as discern with a kind of joyous wonder

its developments, coming forth as of themselves.’ Yet, if the practical

shifts by which words are shaped or applied to fit new meanings are not

devised by an operation of the understanding, we ought consistently to

carry the stratagems of the soldier in the field, or the contrivances of

the workman at his bench, back into the dark regions of instinct and

involuntary action. That the actions of individual men combine to

produce results which may be set down in those general statements of

fact which we call laws, may be stated once again as one of the main

propositions of the Science of Culture. But the nature of a fact is not

altered by its being classed in common with others of the same kind, and

a man is not less the intelligent inventor of a new word or a new

metaphor, because twenty other intelligent inventors elsewhere may have

fallen on a similar expedient.

The theory that the original forms of language are to be referred to a

low or savage condition of culture among the remotely ancient human

race, stands in general consistency with the known facts of philology.

The causes which have produced language, so far as they are understood,

are notable for that childlike simplicity of operation which befits the

infancy of human civilization. The ways in which sounds are in the first

instance chosen and arranged to express ideas, are practical expedients

at the level of nursery philosophy. A child of five years old could

catch the meaning of imitative sounds, interjectional words, symbolism

of sex or distance by contrast of vowels. Just as no one is likely to

enter into the real nature of mythology who has not the keenest

appreciation of nursery tales, so the spirit in which we guess riddles

and play at children’s games is needed to appreciate the lower phases of

language. Such a state of things agrees with the opinion that such

rudimentary speech had its origin among men while in a childlike

intellectual condition, and thus the self-expressive branch of savage

language affords valuable materials for the problem of primitive speech.

If we look back in imagination to an early period of human intercourse,

where gesture and self-expressive utterance may have had a far greater

comparative importance than among ourselves, such a conception

introduces no new element into the problem, for a state of things more

or less answering to this is described among certain low savage tribes.

If we turn from such self-expressive utterance, to that part of

articulate language which carries its sense only by traditional and

seemingly arbitrary custom, we shall find no contradiction to the

hypothesis. Sound carrying direct meaning may be taken up as an element

of language, keeping its first significance recognizable to nations yet

unborn. But it may far more probably become by wear of sound and shift

of sense an expressionless symbol, such as might have been chosen in

pure arbitrariness—a philological process to which the vocabularies of

savage dialects bear full witness. In the course of the development of

language, such traditional words with merely an inherited meaning have

in no small measure driven into the background the self-expressive

words, just as the Eastern figures 2, 3, 4, which are not

self-expressive, have driven into the background the Roman numerals II,

III, IIII, which are—this, again, is an operation which has its place in

savage as in cultivated speech. Moreover, to look closely at language as

a practical means of expressing thought, is to face evidence of no

slight bearing on the history of civilization. We come back to the fact,

so full of suggestion, that the languages of the world represent

substantially the same intellectual art, the higher nations indeed

gaining more expressive power than the lowest tribes, yet doing this not

by introducing new and more effective central principles, but by mere

addition and improvement in detail. The two great methods of naming

thoughts and stating their relation to one another, viz., metaphor and

syntax, belong to the infancy of human expression, and are as thoroughly

at home in the language of savages as of philosophers. If it be argued

that this similarity in principles of language is due to savage tribes

having descended from higher culture, carrying down with them in their

speech the relics of their former excellence, the answer is that

linguistic expedients are actually worked out with as much originality,

and more extensively if not more profitably, among savages than among

cultured men. Take for example the Algonquin system of compounding

words, and the vast Esquimaux scheme of grammatical inflexion. Language

belongs in essential principle both to low grades and high of

civilization; to which should its origin be attributed? An answer may be

had by comparing the methods of language with the work it has to do.

Take language all in all over the world, it is obvious that the

processes by which words are made and adapted have far less to do with

systematic arrangement and scientific classification, than with mere

rough and ready ingenuity and the great rule of thumb. Let any one whose

vocation it is to realize philosophical or scientific conceptions and to

express them in words, ask himself whether ordinary language is an

instrument planned for such purposes. Of course it is not. It is hard to

say which is the more striking, the want of scientific system in the

expression of thought by words, or the infinite cleverness of detail by

which this imperfection is got over, so that he who has an idea does

somehow make shift to get it clearly in words before his own and other

minds. The language by which a nation with highly developed art and

knowledge and sentiment must express its thoughts on these subjects, is

no apt machine devised for such special work, but an old barbaric engine

added to and altered, patched and tinkered into some sort of capability.

Ethnography reasonably accounts at once for the immense power and the

manifest weakness of language as a means of expressing modern educated

thought, by treating it as an original product of low culture, gradually

adapted by ages of evolution and selection, to answer more or less

sufficiently the requirements of modern civilization.

Footnote 283:

Mpongwe _punjina_; Basuto _foka_; Carib _phoubäe_; Arawac _appüdün_

(ignem sufflare). Other cases are given by Wedgwood, ‘Or. of Lang.’ p.

83.

Footnote 284:

See Wedgwood, ‘Dic.’ Introd. p. viii.

Footnote 285:

See Wedgwood, Dic., s.v. ‘mum,’ &c.

Footnote 286:

Bates, ‘Naturalist on the Amazons,’ 2nd ed., p. 404; Markham in ‘Tr.

Eth. Soc.,’ vol. iii. p. 143.

Footnote 287:

‘Avesta,’ Farg. xviii. 34-5.

Footnote 288:

Wedgwood, Dic., s.v. ‘pigeon;’ Diez, ‘Etym. Wörterb.,’ s.v.

‘piccione.’

Footnote 289:

Bopp, ‘Gloss. Sanscr.,’ s.v. ‘go.’ See Pott, ‘Wurzel-Wörterb. der

Indo-Germ. Spr.,’ s.v. ‘gu,’ ‘Zählmethode,’ p. 227.

Footnote 290:

Pott, ‘Doppelung (Reduplication, Gemination) als eines der wichtigsten

Bildungsmittel der Sprache,’ 1862. Frequent use has been here made of

this work.

Footnote 291:

For authorities see especially Pott, ‘Doppelung,’ p. 30, 47-49; W. v.

Humboldt, ‘Kawi-Spr.’ vol. ii. p. 36; Max Müller in Bunsen, ‘Philos.

of Univ. Hist.’ vol. i. p. 329; Latham, ‘Comp. Phil.’ p. 200; and the

grammars and dictionaries of the particular languages. The Guarani and

Carib on authority of D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. ii. p. 268;

Dhimal of Hodgson, ‘Abor. of India,’ p. 69, 79, 115; Colville Ind. of

Wilson in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iv. p. 331; Botocudo of Martius,

‘Gloss. Brasil.’

Footnote 292:

Also Old High German _diz_ and _daz_.

Footnote 293:

Max Müller, l.c.

Footnote 294:

J. C. E. Buschmann, ‘Ueber den Naturlaut,’ Berlin, 1853; and in ‘Abh.

der K. Akad. d. Wissensch,’ 1852. An English trans. in ‘Proc.

Philological Society,’ vol. vi. See De Brosses, ‘Form. des L.,’ vol.

i. p. 211.

Footnote 295:

One family of languages, the Athapascan, contains both _appá_ and

_mama_ as terms for ‘father,’ in the Tahkali and Tlatskanai.

Footnote 296:

See Pott, ‘Indo-Ger. Wurzelwörterb.’ s.v. ‘pâ’; Böhtlingk and Roth,

‘Sanskrit-Wörterb.’ s.v. _mâtar_; Pictet, ‘Origines Indo-Europ.,’ part

ii. p. 349; Max Müller, ‘Lectures,’ 2nd series, p. 212.

Footnote 297:

Facciolati, ‘Lexicon;’ Varro, ap. Nonn., ii. 97.

Footnote 298:

Plato, ‘Cratylus’, 90.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ART OF COUNTING.

Ideas of Number derived from experience—State of Arithmetic among

uncivilized races—Small extent of Numeral-words among low

tribes—Counting by fingers and toes—Hand-numerals show derivation of

Verbal reckoning from Gesture-counting—Etymology of

Numerals—Quinary, Decimal, and Vigesimal notations of the world

derived from counting on fingers and toes—Adoption of foreign

Numeral-words—Evidence of development of Arithmetic from a low

original level of Culture.

Mr. J. S. Mill, in his ‘System of Logic,’ takes occasion to examine the

foundations of the art of arithmetic. Against Dr. Whewell, who had

maintained that such propositions as that two and three make five are

‘necessary truths,’ containing in them an element of certainty beyond

that which mere experience can give, Mr. Mill asserts that ‘two and one

are equal to three’ expresses merely ‘a truth known to us by early and

constant experience: an inductive truth; and such truths are the

foundation of the science of Number. The fundamental truths of that

science all rest on the evidence of sense; they are proved by showing to

our eyes and our fingers that any given number of objects, ten balls for

example, may by separation and re-arrangement exhibit to our senses all

the different sets of numbers the sum of which is equal to ten. All the

improved methods of teaching arithmetic to children proceed on a

knowledge of this fact. All who wish to carry the child’s mind along

with them in learning arithmetic; all who wish to teach numbers, and not

mere ciphers—now teach it through the evidence of the senses, in the

manner we have described.’ Mr. Mill’s argument is taken from the mental

conditions of people among whom there exists a highly advanced

arithmetic. The subject is also one to be advantageously studied from

the ethnographer’s point of view. The examination of the methods of

numeration in use among the lower races not only fully bears out Mr.

Mill’s view, that our knowledge of the relations of numbers is based on

actual experiment, but it enables us to trace the art of counting to its

source, and to ascertain by what steps it arose in the world among

particular races, and probably among all mankind.

In our advanced system of numeration, no limit is known either to

largeness or smallness. The philosopher cannot conceive the formation of

any quantity so large or of any atom so small but the arithmetician can

keep pace with him, and can define it in a simple combination of written

signs. But as we go downwards in the scale of culture, we find that even

where the current language has terms for hundreds and thousands, there

is less and less power of forming a distinct notion of large numbers,

the reckoner is sooner driven to his fingers, and there increases among

the most intelligent that numerical indefiniteness that we notice among

children—if there were not a thousand people in the street there were

certainly a hundred, at any rate there were twenty. Strength in

arithmetic does not, it is true, vary regularly with the level of

general culture. Some savage or barbaric peoples are exceptionally

skilled in numeration. The Tonga Islanders really have native numerals

up to 100,000. Not content even with this, the French explorer

Labillardière pressed them farther and obtained numerals up to 1000

billions, which were duly printed, but proved on later examination to be

partly nonsense-words and partly indelicate expressions,[299] so that

the supposed series of high numerals forms at once a little vocabulary

of Tongan indecency, and a warning as to the probable results of taking

down unchecked answers from question-worried savages. In West Africa, a

lively and continual habit of bargaining has developed a great power of

arithmetic, and little children already do feats of computation with

their heaps of cowries. Among the Yorubas of Abeokuta, to say ‘you don’t

know nine times nine’ is actually an insulting way of saying ‘you are a

dunce.’[300] This is an extraordinary proverb, when we compare it with

the standard which our corresponding European sayings set for the limits

of stupidity: the German says, ‘he can scarce count five’; the Spaniard,

‘I will tell you how many make five’ (cuantos son cinco); and we have

the same saw in England:—

‘... as sure as I’m alive,

And knows how many beans make five.’

A Siamese law-court will not take the evidence of a witness who cannot

count or reckon figures up to ten; a rule which reminds us of the

ancient custom of Shrewsbury, where a person was deemed of age when he

knew how to count up to twelve pence.[301]

Among the lowest living men, the savages of the South American forests

and the deserts of Australia, 5 is actually found to be a number which

the languages of some tribes do not know by a special word. Not only

have travellers failed to get from them names for numbers above 2, 3, or

4, but the opinion that these are the real limits of their numeral

series is strengthened by the use of their highest known number as an

indefinite term for a great many. Spix and Martius say of the low tribes

of Brazil, ‘They count commonly by their finger joints, so up to three

only. Any larger number they express by the word “many.”’[302] In a Puri

vocabulary the numerals are given as 1. _omi_; 2. _curiri_; 3. _prica_,

‘many’: in a Botocudo vocabulary, 1. _mokenam_; 2. _uruhú_, ‘many.’ The

numeration of the Tasmanians is, according to Jorgensen, 1. _parmery_;

2. _calabawa_; more than 2, _cardia_; as Backhouse puts it, they count

‘one, two, plenty;’ but an observer who had specially good

opportunities, Dr. Milligan, gives their numerals up to 5, _puggana_,

which we shall recur to.[303] Mr. Oldfield (writing especially of

Western tribes) says, ‘The New Hollanders have no names for numbers

beyond _two_. The Watchandie scale of notation is _co-ote-on_ (one),

_u-tau-ra_ (two), _bool-tha_ (many), and _bool-tha-bat_ (very many). If

absolutely required to express the numbers three or four, they say

_u-tar-ra coo-te-oo_ to indicate the former number, and _u-tar-ra

u-tar-ra_ to denote the latter.’ That is to say, their names for one,

two, three, and four, are equivalent to ‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘two-one,’

‘two-two.’ Dr. Lang’s numerals from Queensland are just the same in

principle, though the words are different: 1. _ganar_; 2. _burla_; 3.

_burla-ganar_, ‘two-one’; 4. _burla-burla_, ‘two-two’; _korumba_, ‘more

than four, much, great.’ The Kamilaroi dialect, though with the same 2

as the last, improves upon it by having an independent 3, and with the

aid of this it reckons as far as 6: 1. _mal_; 2. _bularr_; 3. _guliba_;

4. _bularr-bularr_, ‘two-two’; 5. _bulaguliba_, ‘two-three’; 6.

_guliba-guliba_ ‘three-three.’ These Australian examples are at least

evidence of a very scanty as well as clumsy numeral system among certain

tribes.[304] Yet here again higher forms will have to be noticed, which

in one district at least carry the native numerals up to 15 or 20.

It is not to be supposed, because a savage tribe has no current words

for numbers above 3 or 5 or so, that therefore they cannot count beyond

this. It appears that they can and do count considerably farther, but it

is by falling back on a lower and ruder method of expression than

speech—the gesture-language. The place in intellectual development held

by the art of counting on one’s fingers, is well marked in the

description which Massieu, the Abbé Sicard’s deaf-and-dumb pupil, gives

of his notion of numbers in his comparatively untaught childhood: ‘I

knew the numbers before my instruction, my fingers had taught me them. I

did not know the ciphers; I counted on my fingers, and when the number

passed 10 I made notches on a bit of wood.’[305] It is thus that all

savage tribes have been taught arithmetic by their fingers. Mr.

Oldfield, after giving the account just quoted of the capability of the

Watchandie language to reach 4 by numerals, goes on to describe the

means by which the tribe contrive to deal with a harder problem in

numeration.

‘I once wished to ascertain the exact number of natives who had been

slain on a certain occasion. The individual of whom I made the enquiry,

began to think over the names ... assigning one of his fingers to each,

and it was not until after many failures, and consequent fresh starts,

that he was able to express so high a number, which he at length did by

holding up his hand three times, thus giving me to understand that

fifteen was the answer to this most difficult arithmetical question.’ Of

the aborigines of Victoria, Mr. Stanbridge says: ‘They have no name for

numerals above two, but by repetition they count to five; they also

record the days of the moon by means of the fingers, the bones and

joints of the arms and the head.’[306] The Bororos of Brazil reckon: 1.

_couai_; 2. _macouai_; 3. _ouai_; and then go on counting on their

fingers, repeating this _ouai_.[307] Of course it no more follows among

savages than among ourselves that, because a man counts on his fingers,

his language must be wanting in words to express the number he wishes to

reckon. For example it was noticed that when natives of Kamchatka were

set to count, they would reckon all their fingers, and then all their

toes, so getting up to 20, and then would ask, ‘What are we to do next?’

Yet it was found on examination that numbers up to 100 existed in their

language.[308] Travellers notice the use of finger-counting among tribes

who can, if they choose, speak the number, and who either silently count

it upon their fingers, or very usually accompany the word with the

action; nor indeed are either of these modes at all unfamiliar in modern

Europe. Let Father Gumilla, one of the early Jesuit missionaries in

South America, describe for us the relation of gesture to speech in

counting, and at the same time bring to our minds very remarkable

examples (to be paralleled elsewhere) of the action of consensus,

whereby conventional rules become fixed among societies of men, even in

so simple an art as that of counting on one’s fingers. ‘Nobody among

ourselves,’ he remarks, ‘except incidentally, would say for instance

“one,” “two,” &c., and give the number on his fingers as well, by

touching them with the other hand. Exactly the contrary happens among

Indians. They say, for instance, “give me one pair of scissors,” and

forthwith they raise one finger; “give me two,” and at once they raise

two, and so on. They would never say “five” without showing a hand,

never “ten” without holding out both, never “twenty” without adding up

the fingers, placed opposite to the toes. Moreover, the mode of showing

the numbers with the fingers differs in each nation. To avoid prolixity,

I give as an example the number “three.” The Otomacs to say “three”

unite the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger, keeping the others down.

The Tamanacs show the little finger, the ring finger, and the middle

finger, and close the other two. The Maipures, lastly, raise the fore,

middle, and ring fingers, keeping the other two hidden.’[309] Throughout

the world, the general relation between finger-counting and

word-counting may be stated as follows. For readiness and for ease and

apprehension of numbers, a palpable arithmetic, such as is worked on

finger-joints or fingers,[310] or heaps of pebbles or beans, or the more

artificial contrivances of the rosary or the abacus, has so great an

advantage over reckoning in words as almost necessarily to precede it.

Thus not only do we find finger-counting among savages and uneducated

men, carrying on a part of their mental operations where language is

only partly able to follow it, but it also retains a place and an

undoubted use among the most cultured nations, as a preparation for and

means of acquiring higher arithmetical methods.

Now there exists valid evidence to prove that a child learning to count

upon its fingers does in a way reproduce a process of the mental history

of the human race; that in fact men counted upon their fingers before

they found words for the numbers they thus expressed; that in this

department of culture, Word-language not only followed Gesture-language,

but actually grew out of it. The evidence in question is principally

that of language itself, which shows that, among many and distant

tribes, men wanting to express 5 in words called it simply by their name

for the _hand_ which they held up to denote it, that in like manner they

said _two hands_ or _half a man_ to denote 10, that the word _foot_

carried on the reckoning up to 15, and to 20, which they described in

words as in gesture by the _hands and feet_ together, or as _one man_,

and that lastly, by various expressions referring directly to the

gestures of counting on the fingers and toes, they gave names to these

and intermediate numerals. As a definite term is wanted to describe

significant numerals of this class, it may be convenient to call them

‘hand-numerals’ or ‘digit-numerals.’ A selection of typical instances

will serve to make it probable that this ingenious device was not, at

any rate generally, copied from one tribe by another or inherited from a

common source, but that its working out with original character and

curiously varying detail displays the recurrence of a similar but

independent process of mental development among various races of man.

Father Gilij, describing the arithmetic of the Tamanacs on the Orinoco,

gives their numerals up to 4: when they come to 5, they express it by

the word _amgnaitòne_, which being translated means ‘a whole hand;’ 6 is

expressed by a term which translates the proper gesture into words,

_itaconò amgnaponà tevinitpe_ ‘one of the other hand,’ and so on up to

9. Coming to 10, they give it in words as _amgna aceponàre_ ‘both

hands.’ To denote 11 they stretch out both the hands, and adding the

foot they say _puittaponà tevinitpe_ ‘one to the foot,’ and thus up to

15, which is _iptaitòne_ ‘a whole foot.’ Next follows 16, ‘one to the

other foot,’ and so on to 20, _tevin itòto_, ‘one Indian;’ 21, _itaconò

itòto jamgnàr bonà tevinitpe_ ‘one to the hands of the other Indian;’

40, _acciachè itòto_, ‘two Indians;’ thence on to 60, 80, 100, ‘three,

four, five Indians,’ and beyond if needful. South America is remarkably

rich in such evidence of an early condition of finger-counting recorded

in spoken language. Among its many other languages which have

recognizable digit-numerals, the Cayriri, Tupi, Abipone, and Carib rival

the Tamanac in their systematic way of working out ‘hand,’ ‘hands,’

‘foot,’ ‘feet,’ &c. Others show slighter traces of the same process,

where, for instance, the numerals 5 or 10 are found to be connected with

words for ‘hand,’ &c., as when the Omagua uses _pua_, ‘hand,’ for 5, and

reduplicates this into _upapua_ for 10. In some South American languages

a man is reckoned by fingers and toes up to 20, while in contrast to

this, there are two languages which display a miserably low mental

state, the man counting only one hand, thus stopping short at 5; the

Juri _ghomen apa_ ‘one man,’ stands for 5; the Cayriri _ibichó_ is used

to mean both ‘person’ and 5. Digit-numerals are not confined to tribes

standing, like these, low or high within the limits of savagery. The

Muyscas of Bogota were among the more civilized native races of America,

ranking with the Peruvians in their culture, yet the same method of

formation which appears in the language of the rude Tamanacs is to be

traced in that of the Muyscas, who, when they came to 11, 12, 13,

counted _quihicha ata_, _bosa_, _mica_, _i.e._, ‘foot one, two,

three.’[311] To turn to North America, Cranz, the Moravian missionary,

thus describes about a century ago the numeration of the Greenlanders.

‘Their numerals,’ he says, ‘go not far, and with them the proverb holds

that they can scarce count five, for they reckon by the five fingers and

then get the help of the toes on their feet, and so with labour bring

out twenty,’ The modern Greenland grammar gives the numerals much as

Cranz does, but more fully. The word for 5 is _tatdlimat_, which there

is some ground for supposing to have once meant ‘hand;’ 6 is

_arfinek-attausek_, ‘on the other hand one,’ or more shortly

_arfinigdlit_, ‘those which have on the other hand;’ 7 is

_arfinek-mardluk_, ‘on the other hand two;’ 13 is _arkanck-pingasut_,

‘on the first foot three;’ 18 is _arfersanek-pingasut_, ‘on the other

foot three;’ when they reach 20, they can say _inuk nâvdlugo_, ‘a man

ended,’ or _inûp avatai nâvdlugit_,’ the man’s outer members ended;’ in

this way by counting several men they reach higher numbers, thus

expressing, for example, 53 as _inûp pinga-jugsâne arkanek-pingasut_,

‘on the third man on the first foot three.’[312] If we pass from the

rude Greenlanders to the comparatively civilized Aztecs, we shall find

on the Northern as on the Southern continent traces of early

finger-numeration surviving among higher races. The Mexican names for

the first four numerals are as obscure in etymology as our own. But when

we come to 5 we find this expressed by _macuilli_; and as _ma_ (ma-itl)

means ‘hand,’ and _cuiloa_ ‘to paint or depict,’ it is likely that the

word for 5 may have meant something like ‘hand-depicting.’ In 10,

_matlactli_, the word _ma_, ‘hand,’ appears again, while _tlactli_ means

half, and is represented in the Mexico picture-writings by the figure of

half a man from the waist upward; thus it appears that the Aztec 10

means the ‘hand-half’ of a man, just as among the Towka Indians of South

America 10 is expressed as ‘half a man,’ a whole man being 20. When the

Aztecs reach 20 they call it _cempoalli_, ‘one counting,’ with evidently

the same meaning as elsewhere, one whole man, fingers and toes.

Among races of the lower culture elsewhere, similar facts are to be

observed. The Tasmanian language again shows the man stopping short

at the reckoning of himself when he has held up one hand and counted

its fingers; this appears by Milligan’s list before mentioned, which

ends with _puggana_, ‘man,’ standing for 5. Some of the West

Australian tribes have done much better than this, using their word

for ‘hand,’ _marh-ra_; _marh-jin-bang-ga_, ‘half the hands,’ is 5;

_marh-jin-bang-ga-gudjir-gyn_, ‘half the hands and one,’ is 6, and

so on; _marh-jin-belli-belli-gudjir-jina-bang-ga_, ‘the hand on

either side and half the feet,’ is 15.[313] As an example from the

Melanesian languages the Maré will serve; it reckons 10 as _ome re

rue tubenine_, apparently ‘the two sides’ (i.e. both hands), 20 as

_sa re ngome_,’one man,’ &c.; thus in John v. 5 ‘which had an

infirmity thirty and eight years,’ the numeral 38 is expressed by

the phrase, ‘one man and both sides five and three.’[314] In the

Malayo-Polynesian languages, the typical word for 5 is _lima_ or

_rima_, ‘hand,’ and the connexion is not lost by the phonetic

variations among different branches of this family of languages, as

in Malagasy _dimy_, Marquesan _fima_, Tongan _nima_, but while

_lima_ and its varieties mean 5 in almost all Malayo-Polynesian

dialects, its meaning of ‘hand’ is confined to a much narrower

district, showing that the word became more permanent by passing

into the condition of a traditional numeral. In languages of the

Malayo-Polynesian family, it is usually found that 6, &c., are

carried on with words whose etymology is no longer obvious, but the

forms _lima-sa_, _lima-zua_ ‘hand-one,’ ‘hand-two,’ have been found

doing duty for 6 and 7.[315] In West Africa, Kölle’s account of the

Vei language gives a case in point. These negroes are so dependent

on their fingers that some can hardly count without, and their toes

are convenient as the calculator squats on the ground. The Vei

people and many other African tribes, when counting, first count the

fingers of their left hand, beginning, be it remembered, from the

little one, then in the same manner those of the right hand, and

afterwards the toes. The Vei numeral for 20, _mō bánde_, means

obviously ‘a person (mo) is finished (bande),’ and similarly 40, 60,

80, &c. ‘two men, three men, four men, &c., are finished,’ It is an

interesting point that the negroes who used these phrases had lost

their original descriptive sense—the words have become mere numerals

to them.[316] Lastly, for bringing before our minds a picture of a

man counting upon his fingers, and being struck by the idea that if

he describes his gestures in words, these words may become an actual

name for the number, perhaps no language in the world surpasses the

Zulu. The Zulu counting on his fingers begins in general with the

little finger of his left hand. When he comes to 5, this he may call

_edesanta_ ‘finish hand;’ then he goes on to the thumb of the right

hand, and so the word _tatisitupa_ ‘taking the thumb’ becomes a

numeral for 6. Then the verb _komba_ ‘to point,’ indicating the

forefinger, or ‘pointer,’ makes the next numeral, 7. Thus, answering

the question ‘How much did your master give you?’ a Zulu would say

‘U _kombile_’ ‘He pointed with his forefinger,’ _i.e._, ‘He gave me

seven,’ and this curious way of using the numeral verb is shown in

such an example as ‘amahasi _akombile_’ ‘the horses have pointed,’

_i.e._, ‘there were seven of them.’ In like manner, _Kijangalobili_

‘keep back two fingers,’ _i.e._ 8, and _Kijangalolunje_ ‘keep back

one finger,’ _i.e._ 9, lead on to _kumi_, 10; at the completion of

each ten the two hands with open fingers are clapped together.[317]

The theory that man’s primitive mode of counting was palpable reckoning

on his hands, and the proof that many numerals in present use are

actually derived from such a state of things, is a great step towards

discovering the origin of numerals in general. Can we go farther, and

state broadly the mental process by which savage men, having no numerals

as yet in their language, came to invent them? What was the origin of

numerals not named with reference to hands and feet, and especially of

the numerals below five, to which such a derivation is hardly

appropriate? The subject is a peculiarly difficult one. Yet as to

principle it is not altogether obscure, for some evidence is forthcoming

as to the actual formation of new numeral words, these being made by

simply pressing into the service names of objects or actions in some way

appropriate to the purpose.

People possessing full sets of inherited numerals in their own languages

have nevertheless sometimes found it convenient to invent new ones. Thus

the scholars of India, ages ago, selected a set of words from a memoria

technica in order to record dates and numbers. These words they chose

for reasons which are still in great measure evident; thus ‘moon’ or

‘earth’ expressed 1, there being but one of each; 2 might be called

‘eye,’ ‘wing,’ ‘arm,’ ‘jaw,’ as going in pairs; for 3 they said ‘Rama,’

‘fire,’ or ‘quality,’ there being considered to be three Ramas, three

kinds of fire, three qualities (guna); for 4 were used ‘veda’, ‘age,’ or

‘ocean,’ there being four of each recognized; ‘season’ for 6, because

they reckoned six seasons; ‘sage’ or ‘vowel’ for 7, from the seven sages

and the seven vowels; and so on with higher numbers, ‘sun’ for 12,

because of his twelve annual denominations, or ‘zodiac’ from its twelve

signs, and ‘nail’ for 20, a word incidentally bringing in a finger

notation. As Sanskrit is very rich in synonyms, and as even the numerals

themselves might be used, it becomes very easy to draw up phrases or

nonsense-verses to record series of numbers by this system of artificial

memory. The following is a Hindu astronomical formula, a list of numbers

referring to the stars of the lunar constellations. Each word stands as

the mnemonic equivalent of the number placed over it in the English

translation. The general principle on which the words are chosen to

denote the numbers is evident without further explanation:—

‘Vahni tri rtvishu gunendu kritâgnibhûta

Bânâsvinetra çara bhûku yugabdhi râmâh

Rudrâbdhirâmagunavedaçatâ dviyugma

Dantâ budhairabhihitâh kramaço bhatârâh.’

3 3 6 5 3 1

‘Fire, three, season, arrow, quality, moon,

4 3 5

four-side of die, fire, element,

5 2 2 5 1 1 4 4 3

Arrow, Asvin, eye, arrow, earth, earth, age, ocean, Rama,

11 4 3 3 4 100 2 2

Rudra, ocean, Rama, quality, Veda, hundred, two, couple,

32

Teeth: by the wise have been set forth in order the mighty

lords.’[318]

It occurred to Wilhelm von Humboldt, in studying this curious system of

numeration, that he had before his eyes the evidence of a process very

like that which actually produced the regular numeral words denoting

_one_, _two_, _three_, &c., in the various languages of the world. The

following passage in which, more than sixty years ago, he set forth this

view, seems to me to contain a nearly perfect key to the theory of

numeral words. ‘If we take into consideration the origin of actual

numerals, the process of their formation appears evidently to have been

the same as that here described. The latter is nothing else than a wider

extension of the former. For when 5 is expressed, as in several

languages of the Malay family, by “hand” (_lima_), this is precisely the

same thing as when in the description of numbers by words, 2 is denoted

by “wing.” Indisputably there lie at the root of all numerals such

metaphors as these, though they cannot always be now traced. But people

seem early to have felt that the multiplicity of such signs for the same

number was superfluous, too clumsy, and leading to misunderstandings.’

Therefore, he goes on to argue, synonyms of numerals are very rare. And

to nations with a deep sense of language, the feeling must soon have

been present, though perhaps without rising to distinct consciousness,

that recollections of the original etymology and descriptive meaning of

numerals had best be allowed to disappear, so as to leave the numerals

themselves to become mere conventional terms.

The most instructive evidence I have found bearing on the formation of

numerals, other than digit-numerals, among the lower races, appears in

the use on both sides of the globe of what may be called numeral-names

for children. In Australia a well-marked case occurs. With all the

poverty of the aboriginal languages in numerals, 3 being commonly used

as meaning ‘several or many,’ the natives in the Adelaide district have

for a particular purpose gone far beyond this narrow limit, and possess

what is to all intents a special numeral system, extending perhaps to 9.

They give fixed names to their children in order of age, which are set

down as follows by Mr. Eyre: 1. Kertameru; 2. Warritya; 3. Kudnutya; 4.

Monaitya; 5. Milaitya; 6. Marrutya; 7. Wangutya; 8. Ngarlaitya; 9.

Pouarna. These are the male names, from which the female differ in

termination. They are given at birth, more distinctive appellations

being soon afterwards chosen.[319] A similar habit makes its appearance

among the Malays, who in some districts are reported to use a series of

seven names in order of age, beginning with 1. _Sulung_ (‘eldest’); 2.

_Awang_ (‘friend, companion’), and ending with _Kechil_ (‘little one’),

or _Bongsu_ (‘youngest’). These are for sons; daughters have _Meh_

prefixed, and nicknames have to be used for practical distinction.[320]

In Madagascar, the Malay connexion manifests itself in the appearance of

a similar set of appellations given to children in lieu of proper names,

which are, however, often substituted in after years. Males; _Lahimatoa_

(‘first male’), _Lah-ivo_ (‘intermediate male’); _Ra-fara-lahy_ (‘last

born male’). Females; _Ramatoa_ (‘eldest female’), _Ra-ivo_

(‘intermediate’), _Ra-fara-vavy_ (‘last born female’).[321] The system

exists in North America. There have been found in use among the Dacotas

the following two series of names for sons and daughters in order of

birth. Eldest son, _Chaské_; second, _Haparm_; third, _Ha-pe-dah_;

fourth, _Chatun_; fifth _Harka_. Eldest daughter, _Wenonah_; second,

_Harpen_; third, _Harpstenah_; fourth, _Waska_; fifth, _We-harka._ These

mere numeral appellations they retain through childhood, till their

relations or friends find occasion to replace them by bestowing some

more distinctive personal name.[322] Africa affords further

examples.[323]

As to numerals in the ordinary sense, Polynesia shows remarkable cases

of new formation. Besides the well-known system of numeral words

prevalent in Polynesia, exceptional terms have from time to time grown

up. Thus the habit of altering words which sounded too nearly like a

king’s name, has led the Tahitians on the accession of new chiefs to

make several new words for numbers. Thus, wanting a new term for 2

instead of the ordinary _rua_, they for obvious reasons took up the word

_piti_, ‘together,’ and made it a numeral, while to get a new word for 5

instead of _rima_, ‘hand,’ which had to be discontinued, they

substituted _pae_, ‘part, division,’ meaning probably division of the

two hands. Such words as these, introduced in Polynesia for ceremonial

reasons, are expected to be dropped again and the old ones replaced,

when the reason for their temporary exclusion ceases, yet the new 2 and

5, _piti_ and _pae_, became so positively the proper numerals of the

language, that they stand instead of _rua_ and _rima_ in the Tahitian

translation of the Gospel of St. John made at the time. Again, various

special habits of counting in the South Sea Islands have had their

effect on language. The Marquesans, counting fish or fruit by one in

each hand, have come to use a system of counting by pairs instead of by

units. They start with _tauna_, ‘a pair,’ which thus becomes a numeral

equivalent to 2; then they count onward by pairs, so that when they talk

of _takau_ or 10, they really mean 10 pair or 20. For bread-fruit, as

they are accustomed to tie them up in knots of four, they begin with the

word _pona_, ‘knot,’ which thus becomes a real numeral for 4, and here

again they go on counting by knots, so that when they say _takau_ or 10,

they mean 10 knots or 40. The philological mystification thus caused in

Polynesian vocabularies is extraordinary; in Tahitian, &c., _rau_ and

_mano_, properly meaning 100 and 1,000, have come to signify 200 and

2,000, while in Hawaii a second doubling in their sense makes them

equivalent to 400 and 4,000. Moreover, it seems possible to trace the

transfer of suitable names of objects still farther in Polynesia in the

Tongan and Maori word _tekau_, 10, which seems to have been a word for

‘parcel’ or ‘bunch,’ used in counting yams and fish, as also in

_tefuhi_, 100, derived from _fuhi_, ‘sheaf or bundle.’[324]

In Africa, also, special numeral formations are to be noticed. In the

Yoruba language, 40 is called _ogodzi_, ‘a string,’ because cowries are

strung by forties, and 200 is _igba_, ‘a heap,’ meaning again a heap of

cowries. Among the Dahomans in like manner, 40 cowries make a _kade_ or

‘string,’ 50 strings make one _afo_ or ‘head;’ these words becoming

numerals for 40 and 2,000. When the king of Dahome attacked Abeokuta, it

is on record that he was repulsed with the heavy loss of ‘two heads,

twenty strings, and twenty cowries’ of men, that is to say, 4,820.[325]

Among cultured nations, whose languages are most tightly bound to the

conventional and unintelligible numerals of their ancestors, it is

likewise usual to find other terms existing which are practically

numerals already, and might drop at once into the recognized places of

such, if by any chance a gap were made for them in the traditional

series. Had we room, for instance, for a new word instead of _two_, then

either _pair_ (Latin _par_, ‘equal’) or _couple_ (Latin _copula_, ‘bond

or tie,’) is ready to fill its place. Instead of _twenty_, the good

English word _score_, ‘notch,’ will serve our turn, while, for the same

purpose, German can use _stiege_, possibly with the original sense of ‘a

stall full of cattle, a sty;’ Old Norse _drôtt_, ‘a company,’ Danish,

_snees_. A list of such words used, but not grammatically classed as

numerals in European languages, shows great variety: examples are, Old

Norse, _flockr_ (flock), 5; _sveit_, 6; _drôtt_ (party), 20; _thiodh_

(people), 30; _fölk_ (people), 40; _öld_ (people), 80; _her_ (army),

100; Sleswig, _schilk_, 12 (as though we were to make a numeral out of

‘shilling’); Middle High-German, _rotte_, 4; New High-German, _mandel_,

15; _schock_ (sheaf), 60. The Letts give a curious parallel to

Polynesian cases just cited. They throw crabs and little fish three at a

time in counting them, and therefore the word _mettens_, ‘a throw,’ has

come to mean 3; while flounders being fastened in lots of thirty, the

word _kahlis_, ‘a cord,’ becomes a term to express this number.[326]

In two other ways, the production of numerals from merely descriptive

words may be observed both among lower and higher races. The Gallas have

no numerical fractional terms, but they make an equivalent set of terms

from the division of the cakes of salt which they use as money. Thus

_tchabnana_, ‘a broken piece’ (from _tchaba_, ‘to break,’ as we say ‘a

fraction’), receives the meaning of one-half; a term which we may

compare with Latin _dimidium_, French _demi_. Ordinal numbers are

generally derived from cardinal numbers, as _third_, _fourth_, _fifth_,

from _three_, _four_, _five_. But among the very low ones there is to be

seen evidence of independent formation quite unconnected with a

conventional system of numerals already existing. Thus the Greenlander

did not use his ‘one’ to make ‘first,’ but calls it _sujugdlek_,

‘foremost,’ nor ‘two’ to make ‘second,’ which he calls _aipâ_, ‘his

companion;’ it is only at ‘third’ that he takes to his cardinals, and

forms _pingajuat_ in connexion with _pingasut_, 3. So, in Indo-European

languages, the ordinal _prathamas_, πρῶτος, _primus_, _first_, has

nothing to do with a numerical ‘one,’ but with the preposition _pra_,

‘before,’ as meaning simply ‘foremost;’ and although Greeks and Germans

call the next ordinal δεύτερος, _zweite_, from δυό, _zwei_, we call it

_second_, Latin _secundus_, ‘the following’ (_sequi_), which is again a

descriptive sense-word.

If we allow ourselves to mix for a moment what is with what might be, we

can see how unlimited is the field of possible growth of numerals by

mere adoption of the names of familiar things. Following the example of

the Sleswigers we might make _shilling_ a numeral for 12, and go on to

express 4 by _groat_; _week_ would provide us with a name for 7, and

_clover_ for 3. But this simple method of description is not the only

available one for the purpose of making numerals. The moment any series

of names is arranged in regular order in our minds, it becomes a

counting-machine. I have read of a little girl who was set to count

cards, and she counted them accordingly, January, February, March,

April. She might, of course, have reckoned them as Monday, Tuesday,

Wednesday. It is interesting to find a case coming under the same class

in the language of grown people. We know that the numerical value of the

Hebrew letters is given with reference to their place in the alphabet,

which was arranged for reasons that can hardly have had anything to do

with arithmetic. The Greek alphabet is modified from a Semitic one, but

instead of letting the numeral value of their letters follow throughout

their newly-arranged alphabet, they reckon α, β, γ, δ, ε, properly, as

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then put in σ for 6, and so manage to let ι stand for 10,

as י does in Hebrew, where it is really the 10th letter. Now, having

this conventional arrangement of letters made, it is evident that a

Greek who had to give up the regular 1, 2, 3,—εἷς, δύο, τρεῖς, could

supply their places at once by adopting the names of the letters which

had been settled to stand for them, thus calling 1 _alpha_, 2 _bēta_, 3

_gamma_, and so onward. The thing has actually happened; a remarkable

slang dialect of Albania, which is Greek in structure, though full of

borrowed and mystified words and metaphors and epithets understood only

by the initiated, has, as its equivalent for ‘four’ and ‘ten,’ the words

δέλτα and ἰῶτα.[327]

While insisting on the value of such evidence as this in making out the

general principles of the formation of numerals, I have not found it

profitable to undertake the task of etymologizing the actual numerals of

the languages of the world, outside the safe limits of the systems of

digit-numerals among the lower races, already discussed. There may be in

the languages of the lower races other relics of the etymology of

numerals, giving the clue to the ideas according to which they were

selected for an arithmetical purpose, but such relics seem scanty and

indistinct.[328] There may even exist vestiges of a growth of numerals

from descriptive words in our Indo-European languages, in Hebrew and

Arabic, in Chinese. Such etymologies have been brought forward,[329] and

they are consistent with what is known of the principles on which

numerals or quasi-numerals are really formed. But so far as I have been

able to examine the evidence, the cases all seem so philologically

doubtful, that I cannot bring them forward in aid of the theory before

us, and, indeed, think that if they succeed in establishing themselves,

it will be by the theory supporting them, rather than by their

supporting the theory. This state of things, indeed, fits perfectly with

the view here adopted, that when a word has once been taken up to serve

as a numeral, and is thenceforth wanted as a mere symbol, it becomes the

interest of language to allow it to break down into an apparent

nonsense-word, from which all traces of original etymology have

disappeared.

Etymological research into the derivation of numeral words thus hardly

goes with safety beyond showing in the languages of the lower culture

frequent instances of digit-numerals, words taken from direct

description of the gestures of counting on fingers and toes. Beyond

this, another strong argument is available, which indeed covers almost

the whole range of the problem. The numerical systems of the world, by

the actual schemes of their arrangement, extend and confirm the opinion

that counting on fingers and toes was man’s original method of

reckoning, taken up and represented in language. To count the fingers on

one hand up to 5, and then go on with a second five, is a notation by

fives, or as it is called, a quinary notation. To count by the use of

both hands to 10, and thence to reckon by tens, is a decimal notation.

To go on by hands and feet to 20, and thence to reckon by twenties, is a

vigesimal notation. Now though in the larger proportion of known

languages, no distinct mention of fingers and toes, hands and feet, is

observable in the numerals themselves, yet the very schemes of quinary,

decimal, and vigesimal notation remain to vouch for such

hand-and-foot-counting having been the original method on which they

were founded. There seems no doubt that the number of the fingers led to

the adoption of the not especially suitable number 10 as a period in

reckoning, so that decimal arithmetic is based on human anatomy. This is

so obvious, that it is curious to see Ovid in his well-known lines

putting the two facts close together, without seeing that the second was

the consequence of the first.

‘Annus erat, decimum cum luna receperat orbem.

Hic numerus magno tune in honore fuit.

Seu quia tot digiti, per quos numerare solemus:

Seu quia bis quino femina mense parit:

Seu quod adusque decem numero crescente venitur,

Principium spatiis sumitur inde novis.’[330]

In surveying the languages of the world at large, it is found that among

tribes or nations far enough advanced in arithmetic to count up to five

in words, there prevails, with scarcely an exception, a method founded

on hand-counting, quinary, decimal, vigesimal, or combined of these. For

perfect examples of the quinary method, we may take a Polynesian series

which runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5·1, 5·2, &c.; or a Melanesian series which

may be rendered as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2nd 1, 2nd 2, &c. Quinary leading into

decimal is well shown in the Fellata series 1 ... 5, 5·1 ... 10, 10·1

...10·5, 10·5·1 ... 20, ... 30, ... 40, &c. Pure decimal may be

instanced from Hebrew 1, 2 ... 10, 10·1 ... 20, 20·1 ... &c. Pure

vigesimal is not usual, for the obvious reason that a set of independent

numerals to 20 would be inconvenient; but it takes on from quinary, as

in Aztec, which may be analyzed as 1, 2 ... 5, 5·1 ... 10, 10·1 ...

10·5, 10·5·1 ... 20, 20·1 ... 20·10, 20·10·1 ... 40, &c.; or from

decimal, as in Basque, 1 ... 10, 10·1 ... 20, 20·1 ... 20·10, 20·10·1

... 40 &c.[331] It seems unnecessary to bring forward here the mass of

linguistic details required for any general demonstration of these

principles of numeration among the races of the world. Prof. Pott, of

Halle, has treated the subject on elaborate philological evidence, in a

special monograph,[332] which is incidentally the most extensive

collection of details relating to numerals, indispensable to students

occupied with such enquiries. For the present purpose the following

rough generalization may suffice, that the quinary system is frequent

among the lower races, among whom also the vigesimal system is

considerably developed, but the tendency of the higher nations has been

to avoid the one as too scanty, and the other as too cumbrous, and to

use the intermediate decimal system. These differences in the usage of

various tribes and nations do not interfere with, but rather confirm,

the general principle which is their common cause, that man originally

learnt to reckon from his fingers and toes, and in various ways

stereotyped in language the result of this primitive method.

Some curious points as to the relation of these systems may be noticed

in Europe. It was observed of a certain deaf-and-dumb boy, Oliver

Caswell, that he learnt to count as high as 50 on his fingers, but

always ‘fived,’ reckoning, for instance, 18 objects as ‘both hands, one

hand, three fingers.’[333] The suggestion has been made that the Greek

use of πεμπάζειν, ‘to five,’ as an expression for counting, is a trace

of rude old quinary numeration (compare Finnish _lokket_ ‘to count,’

from _lokke_ ‘ten’). Certainly, the Roman numerals I, II, ... V, VI ...

X, XI ... XV, XVI, &c., form a remarkably well-defined written quinary

system. Remains of vigesimal counting are still more instructive.

Counting by twenties is a strongly marked Keltic characteristic. The

cumbrous vigesimal notation could hardly be brought more strongly into

view in any savage race than in such examples as Gaelic _aon deug is da

fhichead_ ‘one, ten, and two twenties,’ i.e., 51; or Welsh _unarbymtheg

ar ugain_ ‘one and fifteen over twenty,’ i.e., 36; or Breton _unnek ha

triugent_ ‘eleven and three twenties,’ i.e., 71. Now French, being a

Romance language, has a regular system of Latin tens up to 100;

_cinquante_, _soixante_, _septante_, _huitante_, _nonante_, which are to

be found still in use in districts within the limits of the French

language, as in Belgium. Nevertheless, the clumsy system of reckoning by

twenties has broken out through the decimal system in France. The

_septante_ is to a great extent suppressed, _soixante-quatorze_, for

instance, standing for 74; _quatre-vingts_ has fairly established itself

for 80, and its use continues into the nineties, _quatre-vingt-treize_

for 93; in numbers above 100 we find _six-vingts_, _sept-vingts_,

_huit-vingts_, for 120, 140, 160, and a certain hospital has its name of

Les Quinze-vingts from its 300 inmates. It is, perhaps, the most

reasonable explanation of this curious phenomenon, to suppose the

earlier Keltic system of France to have held its ground, modelling the

later French into its own ruder shape. In England, the Anglo-Saxon

numeration is decimal, _hund-seofontig_, 70; _hund-eahtatig_, 80;

_hund-nigontig_, 90; _hund-teontig_, 100; _hund-enlufontig_, 110;

_hund-twelftig_, 120. It may be here also by Keltic survival that the

vigesimal reckoning by the ‘score,’ _threescore and ten_, _fourscore and

thirteen_, &c., gained a position in English which it has not yet

totally lost.[334]

From some minor details in numeration, ethnological hints may be gained.

Among rude tribes with scanty series of numerals, combination to make

out new numbers is very soon resorted to. Among Australian tribes

addition makes ‘two-one,’ ‘two-two,’ express 3 and 4; in Guachi

‘two-two’ is 4; in San Antonio ‘four and two-one’ is 7. The plan of

making numerals by subtraction is known in North America, and is well

shown in the Aino language of Yesso, where the words for 8 and 9

obviously mean ‘two from ten,’ ‘one from ten.’ Multiplication appears,

as in San Antonio, ‘two-and-one-two,’ and in a Tupi dialect ‘two-three,’

to express 6. Division seems not known for such purposes among the lower

races, and quite exceptional among the higher. Facts of this class show

variety in the inventive devices of mankind, and independence in their

formation of language. They are consistent at the same time with the

general principles of hand-counting. The traces of what might be called

binary, ternary, quaternary, senary reckoning, which turn on 2, 3, 4, 6,

are mere varieties, leading up to, or lapsing into, quinary and decimal

methods.

The contrast is a striking one between the educated European, with his

easy use of his boundless numeral series, and the Tasmanian, who reckons

3, or anything beyond 2, as ‘many,’ and makes shift by his whole hand to

reach the limit of ‘man,’ that is to say, 5. This contrast is due to

arrest of development in the savage, whose mind remains in the childish

state which the beginning of one of our nursery number-rhymes

illustrates curiously. It runs—

‘One’s none,

Two’s some,

Three’s a many,

Four’s a penny,

Five’s a little hundred.’

To notice this state of things among savages and children raises

interesting points as to the early history of grammar. W. von Humboldt

suggested the analogy between the savage notion of 3 as ‘many’ and the

grammatical use of 3 to form a kind of superlative, in forms of which

‘trismegistus,’ ‘ter felix,’ ‘thrice blest,’ are familiar instances. The

relation of single, dual, and plural is well shown pictorially in the

Egyptian hieroglyphics, where the picture of an object, a horse for

instance, is marked by a single line | if but one is meant, by two lines

| | if two are meant, by three lines | | | if three or an indefinite

plural number are meant. The scheme of grammatical number in some of the

most ancient and important languages of the world is laid down on the

same savage principle. Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek,

Gothic, are examples of languages using singular, dual, and plural

number; but the tendency of higher intellectual culture has been to

discard the plan as inconvenient and unprofitable, and only to

distinguish singular and plural. No doubt the dual held its place by

inheritance from an early period of culture, and Dr. D. Wilson seems

justified in his opinion that it ‘preserves to us the memorial of that

stage of thought when all beyond two was an idea of indefinite

number.’[335]

When two races at different levels of culture come into contact, the

ruder people adopt new art and knowledge, but at the same time their own

special culture usually comes to a standstill, and even falls off. It is

thus with the art of counting. We may be able to prove that the lower

race had actually been making great and independent progress in it, but

when the higher race comes with a convenient and unlimited means of not

only naming all imaginable numbers, but of writing them down and

reckoning with them by means of a few simple figures, what likelihood is

there that the barbarian’s clumsy methods should be farther worked out?

As to the ways in which the numerals of the superior race are grafted on

the language of the inferior, Captain Grant describes the native slaves

of Equatorial Africa occupying their lounging hours in learning the

numerals of their Arab masters.[336] Father Dobrizhoffer’s account of

the arithmetical relations between the native Brazilians and the Jesuits

is a good description of the intellectual contact between savages and

missionaries. The Guaranis, it appears, counted up to 4 with their

native numerals, and when they got beyond, they would say ‘innumerable.’

‘But as counting is both of manifold use in common life, and in the

confessional absolutely indispensable in making a complete confession,

the Indians were daily taught at the public catechising in the church to

count in Spanish. On Sundays the whole people used to count with a loud

voice in Spanish, from 1 to 1,000.’ The missionary, it is true, did not

find the natives use the numbers thus learnt very accurately—‘We were

washing at a blackamoor,’ he says.[337] If, however, we examine the

modern vocabularies of savage or low barbarian tribes, they will be

found to afford interesting evidence how really effective the influence

of higher on lower civilization has been in this matter. So far as the

ruder system is complete and moderately convenient, it may stand, but

where it ceases or grows cumbrous, and sometimes at a lower limit than

this, we can see the cleverer foreigner taking it into his own hands,

supplementing or supplanting the scanty numerals of the lower race by

his own. The higher race, though advanced enough to act thus on the

lower, need not be itself at an extremely high level. Markham observes

that the Jivaras of the Marañon, with native numerals up to 5, adopt for

higher numbers those of the Quichua, the language of the Peruvian

Incas.[338] The cases of the indigenes of India are instructive. The

Khonds reckon 1 and 2 in native words, and then take to borrowed Hindi

numerals. The Oraon tribes, while belonging to a race of the Dravidian

stock, and having had a series of native numerals accordingly, appear to

have given up their use beyond 4, or sometimes even 2, and adopted Hindi

numerals in their place.[339] The South American Conibos were observed

to count 1 and 2 with their own words, and then to borrow Spanish

numerals, much as a Brazilian dialect of the Tupi family is noticed in

the last century as having lost the native 5, and settled down into

using the old native numerals up to 3, and then continuing in

Portuguese.[340] In Melanesia, the Annatom language can only count in

its own numerals to 5, and then borrows English _siks_, _seven_, _eet_,

_nain_, &c. In some Polynesian islands, though the native numerals are

extensive enough, the confusion arising from reckoning by pairs and

fours as well as units, has induced the natives to escape from

perplexity by adopting _huneri_ and _tausani_.[341] And though the

Esquimaux counting by hands, feet, and whole men, is capable of

expressing high numbers, it becomes practically clumsy even when it gets

among the scores, and the Greenlander has done well to adopt _untrîte_

and _tusinte_ from his Danish teachers. Similarity of numerals in two

languages is a point to which philologists attach great and deserved

importance in the question whether they are to be considered as sprung

from a common stock. But it is clear that so far as one race may have

borrowed numerals from another, this evidence breaks down. The fact that

this borrowing extends as low as 3, and may even go still lower for all

we know, is a reason for using the argument from connected numerals

cautiously, as tending rather to prove intercourse than kinship.

At the other end of the scale of civilization, the adoption of numerals

from nation to nation still presents interesting philological points.

Our own language gives curious instances, as _second_ and _million_. The

manner in which English, in common with German, Dutch, Danish, and even

Russian, has adopted Mediæval Latin _dozena_ (from _duodecim_) shows how

convenient an arrangement it was found to buy and sell by the _dozen_,

and how necessary it was to have a special word for it. But the

borrowing process has gone farther than this. If it were asked how many

sets of numerals are now in use among English-speaking people in

England, the probable reply would be one set, the regular _one_, _two_,

_three_, &c. There exist, however, two borrowed sets as well. One is the

well-known dicing-set, _ace_, _deuce_, _tray_, _cater_, _cinque_,

_size_; thus _size-ace_ is ‘6 and one,’ _cinques_ or _sinks_, ‘double

five.’ These came to us from France, and correspond with the common

French numerals, except _ace_, which is Latin _as_, a word of great

philological interest, meaning ‘one.’ The other borrowed set is to be

found in the Slang Dictionary. It appears that the English street-folk

have adopted as a means of secret communication a set of Italian

numerals from the organ-grinders and image-sellers, or by other ways

through which Italian or Lingua Franca is brought into the low

neighbourhoods of London. In so doing, they have performed a

philological operation not only curious, but instructive. By copying

such expressions as, Italian _due soldi_, _tre soldi_, as equivalent to

‘twopence,’ ‘threepence,’ the word _saltee_ became a recognized slang

term for ‘penny,’ and pence are reckoned as follows:—

_Oney saltee_ ... 1_d._ uno soldo.

_Dooe saltee_ ... 2_d._ due soldi.

_Tray saltee_ ... 3_d._ tre soldi.

_Quarterer saltee_ ... 4_d._ quattro soldi.

_Chinker saltee_ ... 5_d._ cinque soldi.

_Say saltee_ ... 6_d._ sei soldi.

_Say oney saltee or setter saltee_ ... 7_d._ sette soldi.

_Say dooe saltee or otter saltee_ ... 8_d._ otto soldi.

_Say tray saltee or nobba saltee_ ... 9_d._ nove soldi.

_Say quarterer saltee or dacha saltee_ ... 10_d._ dieci soldi.

_Say chinker saltee or dacha oney saltee_ ... 11_d._ undici soldi.

_Oney beong_ ... 1_s._

_A beong say saltee_ ... 1_s._ 6_d._

_Dooe beong say saltee or madza caroon_ ... 2_s._ 6_d._ (half crown,

mezza corona.)[342]

One of these series simply adopts Italian numerals decimally. But the

other, when it has reached 6, having had enough of novelty, makes 7 by

‘six-one,’ and so continues. It is for no abstract reason that 6 is thus

made the turning-point, but simply because the costermonger is adding

pence up to the silver sixpence, and then adding pence again up to the

shilling. Thus our duodecimal coinage has led to the practice of

counting by sixes, and produced a philological curiosity, a real senary

notation.

On evidence such as has been brought forward in this essay, the apparent

relations of savage to civilized culture, as regards the Art of

Counting, may now be briefly stated in conclusion. The principal methods

to which the development of the higher arithmetic are due, lie outside

the problem. They are mostly ingenious plans of expressing numerical

relation by written symbols. Among them are the Semitic scheme, and the

Greek derived from it, of using the alphabet as a series of numerical

symbols, a plan not quite discarded by ourselves, at least for ordinals,

as in schedules A, B, &c.; the use of initials of numeral words as

figures for the numbers themselves, as in Greek Π and Δ for 5 and 10,

Roman C and M for 100 and 1,000; the device of expressing fractions,

shown in a rudimentary stage in Greek γ’, δ’, for 1/3, 1/4, γδ for 3/4;

the introduction of the cipher or zero, by means of which the Arabic or

Indian numerals have their value according to their position in a

decimal order corresponding to the succession of the rows of the abacus;

and lastly, the modern notation of decimal fractions by carrying down

below the unit the proportional order which for ages had been in use

above it. The ancient Egyptian and the still-used Roman and Chinese

numeration are indeed founded on savage picture-writing,[343] while the

abacus and the swan-pan, the one still a valuable school-instrument, and

the other in full practical use, have their germ in the savage counting

by groups of objects, as when South Sea Islanders count with coco-nut

stalks, putting a little one aside every time they come to 10, and a

large one when they come to 100, or when African negroes reckon with

pebbles or nuts, and every time they come to 5 put them aside in a

little heap.[344]

We are here especially concerned with gesture-counting on the fingers,

as an absolutely savage art still in use among children and peasants,

and with the system of numeral words, as known to all mankind, appearing

scantily among the lowest tribes, and reaching within savage limits to

developments which the highest civilization has only improved in detail.

These two methods of computation by gesture and word tell the story of

primitive arithmetic in a way that can be hardly perverted or

misunderstood. We see the savage who can only count to 2 or 3 or 4 in

words, but can go farther in dumb show. He has words for hands and

fingers, feet and toes, and the idea strikes him that the words which

describe the gesture will serve also to express its meaning, and they

become his numerals accordingly. This did not happen only once, it

happened among different races in distant regions, for such terms as

‘hand’ for 5, ‘hand-one’ for 6, ‘hands’ for 10, ‘two on the foot’ for

12, ‘hands and feet’ or ‘man’ for 20, ‘two men’ for 40, &c., show such

uniformity as is due to common principle, but also such variety as is

due to independent working-out. These are ‘pointer-facts’ which have

their place and explanation in a development-theory of culture, while a

degeneration-theory totally fails to take them in. They are distinct

records of development, and of independent development, among savage

tribes to whom some writers on civilization have rashly denied the very

faculty of self-improvement. The original meaning of a great part of the

stock of numerals of the lower races, especially of those from 1 to 4,

not suited to be named as hand-numerals, is obscure. They may have been

named from comparison with objects, in a way which is shown actually to

happen in such forms as ‘together’ for 2, ‘throw’ for 3, ‘knot’ for 4;

but any concrete meaning we may guess them to have once had seems now by

modification and mutilation to have passed out of knowledge.

Remembering how ordinary words change and lose their traces of original

meaning in the course of ages, and that in numerals such breaking down

of meaning is actually desirable, to make them fit for pure arithmetical

symbols, we cannot wonder that so large a proportion of existing

numerals should have no discernible etymology. This is especially true

of the 1, 2, 3, 4, among low and high races alike, the earliest to be

made, and therefore the earliest to lose their primary significance.

Beyond these low numbers the languages of the higher and lower races

show a remarkable difference. The hand-and-foot numerals, so prevalent

and unmistakable in savage tongues like Esquimaux and Zulu, are scarcely

if at all traceable in the great languages of civilization, such as

Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. This state of things is quite

conformable to the development-theory of language. We may argue that it

was in comparatively recent times that savages arrived at the invention

of hand-numerals, and that therefore the etymology of such numerals

remains obvious. But it by no means follows from the non-appearance of

such primitive forms in cultured Asia and Europe, that they did not

exist there in remote ages; they may since have been rolled and battered

like pebbles by the stream of time, till their original shapes can no

longer be made out. Lastly, among savage and civilized races alike, the

general framework of numeration stands throughout the world as an

abiding monument of primæval culture. This framework, the all but

universal scheme of reckoning by fives, tens, and twenties, shows that

the childish and savage practice of counting on fingers and toes lies at

the foundation of our arithmetical science. Ten seems the most

convenient arithmetical basis offered by systems founded on

hand-counting, but twelve would have been better, and duodecimal

arithmetic is in fact a protest against the less convenient decimal

arithmetic in ordinary use. The case is the not uncommon one of high

civilization bearing evident traces of the rudeness of its origin in

ancient barbaric life.

Footnote 299:

Mariner, ‘Tonga Islands,’ vol. ii. p. 390.

Footnote 300:

Crowther, ‘Yoruba Vocab.’; Burton, ‘W. & W. from W. Africa,’ p. 253.

‘O daju danu, o ko mo essan messan.—You (may seem) very clever, (but)

you can’t tell 9 × 9.’

Footnote 301:

Low in ‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ vol. i. p. 408; ‘Year-Books Edw. I.’

(xx.-i.) ed. Horwood, p. 220.

Footnote 302:

Spix and Martius, ‘Reise in Brazilien,’ p. 387.

Footnote 303:

‘Tasmanian Journal,’ vol. i.; Backhouse, ‘Narr.’ p. 104; Milligan in

‘Papers, &c., Roy. Soc. Tasmania,’ vol. iii. part ii. 1859.

Footnote 304:

Oldfield in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’; vol. iii. p. 291; Lang, ‘Queensland,’ p.

433; ‘Latham, Comp. Phil.’ p. 352. Other terms in Bonwick, l. c.

Footnote 305:

Sicard, ‘Théorie des Signes pour l’Instruction des Sourds-Muets,’ vol.

ii. p. 634.

Footnote 306:

Stanbridge in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. i. p. 304.

Footnote 307:

Martius, ‘Gloss. Brasil,’ p. 15.

Footnote 308:

Kracheninnikow, ‘Kamtchatka,’ p. 17.

Footnote 309:

Gumilla, ‘Historia del Orenoco,’ vol. iii. ch. xlv.; Pott,

‘Zählmethode,’ p. 16.

Footnote 310:

The Eastern brokers have used for ages, and still use, the method of

secretly indicating numbers to one another in bargaining, ‘by snipping

fingers under a cloth.’ ‘Every joynt and every finger hath his

signification,’ as an old traveller says, and the system seems a more

or less artificial development of ordinary finger-counting, the thumb

and little finger stretched out, and the other fingers closed,

standing for 6 or 60, the addition of the fourth finger making 7 or

70, and so on. It is said that between two brokers settling a price by

thus snipping with the fingers, cleverness in bargaining, offering a

little more, hesitating, expressing an obstinate refusal to go

farther, &c., comes out just as in chaffering in words.

Footnote 311:

Gilij; ‘Saggio di Storia Americana,’ vol. ii. p. 332 (Tamanac,

Maypure). Martius, ‘Gloss. Brasil,’ (Cayriri, Tupi, Carib, Omagua,

Juri, Guachi, Coretu, Cherentes, Maxuruna, Caripuna, Cauixana,

Carajás, Coroado, &c.); Dobrizhoffer, ‘Abipones,’ vol. ii. p. 168;

Humboldt, ‘Monumens,’ pl. xliv. (Muysca).

Footnote 312:

Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 286; Kleinschmidt, ‘Gr. der Grönl. Spr.;’ Rae in

‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iv. p. 145.

Footnote 313:

Milligan, l. c.; G. F. Moore, ‘Vocab. W. Australia.’ Compare a series

of quinary numerals to 9, from Sydney, in Pott, ‘Zählmethode,’ p. 46.

Footnote 314:

Gabelentz, ‘Melanesiche Sprachen,’ p. 183.

Footnote 315:

W. v. Humboldt, ‘Kawi-Spr.’ vol. ii. p. 308; corroborated by ‘As.

Res.’ vol. vi. p. 90; ‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ vol. iii. p. 182, &c.

Footnote 316:

Kölle, ‘Gr. of Vei Lang.’ p. 27.

Footnote 317:

Schreuder, ‘Gr. for Zulu Sproget,’ p. 30; Döhne, ‘Zulu Dic.’; Grout,

‘Zulu Gr.’ See Hahn, ‘Gr. des Herero.’

Footnote 318:

Sir W. Jones in ‘As. Res.’ vol. ii. 1790, p. 296; E. Jacquet in ‘Nouv.

Journ. Asiat.’ 1835; W. v. Humboldt, ‘Kawi-Spr.’ vol. i. p. 19. This

system of recording dates, &c., extended as far as Tibet and the

Indian Archipelago. Many important points of Oriental chronology

depend on such formulas. Unfortunately their evidence is more or less

vitiated by inconsistencies in the use of words for numbers.

Footnote 319:

Eyre, ‘Australia,’ vol. ii. p. 324; Schürmann, ‘Vocab. of Parnkalla

Lang,’ gives forms partially corresponding.

Footnote 320:

‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ New Ser. vol. ii. 1858, p. 118 (Sulong, Awang,

Itam (‘black’), Puteh (‘white’), Allang, Pendeh, Kechil or Bongsu);

Bastian, ‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. ii. p. 494. The details are imperfectly

given, and seem not all correct.

Footnote 321:

Ellis, ‘Madagascar,’ vol. i. p. 154. Also Andriampaivo, or

Lahi-Zandrina, for last male; Andrianivo for intermediate male.

Malagasy _lahy_, ‘male’= Malay _laki_; Malagasy _vavy_, ‘female’ =

Tongan _fafine_, Maori _wahine_, ‘woman;’ comp. Malay _bâtina_,

‘female.’

Footnote 322:

M. Eastman, ‘Dahcotah; or, Life and Legends of the Sioux,’ p. xxv.

Footnote 323:

‘Journ. Ethnol. Soc.’ vol. iv. (Akra); Ploss, ‘Das Kind,’ vol. i. p.

139 (Elmina).

Footnote 324:

H. Hale, ‘Ethnography and Philology,’ vol. vi. of Wilkes, U.S.

Exploring Exp., Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 172, 289. (N.B.—The ordinary

editions do not contain this important volume.)

Footnote 325:

Bowen, ‘Gr. and Dic. of Yoruba.’ Burton in ‘Mem. Anthrop. Soc.,’ vol.

i. p. 314.

Footnote 326:

See Pott, ‘Zählmethode,’ pp. 78, 99, 124, 161; Grimm, ‘Deutsche

Rechtsalterthümer,’ ch. v.

Footnote 327:

Francisque-Michel, ‘Argot,’ p. 483.

Footnote 328:

Of evidence of this class, the following deserves

attention:—Dobrizhoffer, ‘Abipones,’ vol. ii. p. 169, gives

_geyenkñatè_, ‘ostrich-toes,’ as the numeral for 4, their ostrich

having three toes before and one behind, and _neènhalek_, ‘a

five-coloured spotted hide,’ as the numeral 5. D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme

Américain,’ vol. ii. p. 163, remarks:—‘Les Chiquitos ne savent compter

que jusqu’à un (_tama_), n’ayant plus ensuite que des termes de

comparaison.’ Kölle, ‘Gr. of Vei Lang.,’ notices that _féra_ means

both ‘with’ and 2, and thinks the former meaning original (compare the

Tah. _piti_, ‘together,’ thence 2). Quichua _chuncu_, ‘heap,’

_chunca_, 10, may be connected. Aztec, _ce_, 1, _cen-tli_, ‘grain,’

may be connected. On possible derivations of 2 from hand, &c.,

especially Hottentot, _t’koam_, ‘hand, 2,’ see Pott, ‘Zählmethode,’ p.

29.

Footnote 329:

See Farrar, ‘Chapters on Language,’ p. 223. Benloew, ‘Recherches sur

l’Origine des Noms de Nombre;’ Pictet, ‘Origines Indo-Europ.’ part ii.

ch. ii.; Pott, ‘Zählmethode,’ p. 128, &c.; A. v. Humboldt’s plausible

comparison between Skr. _pancha_, 5, and Pers. _penjeh_, ‘the palm of

the hand with the fingers spread out; the outspread foot of a bird,’

as though 5 were called _pancha_ from being like a hand, is erroneous.

The Persian _penjeh_ is itself derived from the numeral 5, as in Skr.

the hand is called _panchaçâkha_, ‘the five-branched.’ The same

formation is found in English; slang describes a man’s hand as his

‘fives,’ or ‘bunch of fives,’ thence the name of the game of fives,

played by striking the ball with the open hand, a term which has made

its way out of slang into accepted language. Burton describes the

polite Arab at a meal, calling his companion’s attention to a grain of

rice fallen into his beard. ‘The gazelle is in the garden,’ he says,

with a smile. ‘We will hunt her with the _five_,’ is the reply.

Footnote 330:

Ovid, Fast. iii. 121.

Footnote 331:

The actual word-numerals of the two quinary series are given as

examples. Triton’s Bay, 1, _samosi_; 2, _roëeti_; 3, _touwroe_; 4,

_faat_; 5, _rimi_; 6, _rim-samos_; 7, _rim-roëeti_; 8, _rim-touwroe_;

9, _rim-faat_; 10, _woetsja_. Lifu, 1, _pacha_; 2, _lo_; 3, _kun_; 4,

_thack_; 5, _thabumb_; 6, _lo-acha_; 7, _lo-a-lo_; 8, _lo-kunn_; 9,

_lo-thack_; 10, _te-bennete_.

Footnote 332:

A. F. Pott, ‘Die Quinäre und Vigesimale Zählmethode bei Völkern aller

Welttheile,’ Halle, 1847; supplemented in ‘Festgabe zur xxv.

Versammlung Deutscher Philologen, &c., in Halle’ (1867).

Footnote 333:

‘Account of Laura Bridgman,’ London, 1845, p. 159.

Footnote 334:

Compare the Rajmahali tribes adopting Hindi numerals, yet reckoning by

twenties. Shaw, l.c. The use of a ‘score’ as an indefinite number in

England, and similarly of 20 in France, of 40 in the Hebrew of the Old

Testament and the Arabic of the Thousand and One Nights, may be among

other traces of vigesimal reckoning.

Footnote 335:

D. Wilson, ‘Prehistoric Man,’ p. 616.

Footnote 336:

Grant in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 90.

Footnote 337:

Dobrizhoffer, ‘Gesch. der Abiponer,’ p. 205; Eng. Trans. vol. ii. p.

171.

Footnote 338:

Markham in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 166.

Footnote 339:

Latham, ‘Comp. Phil.’ p. 186; Shaw in ‘As. Res.’ vol. iv. p. 96;

‘Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,’ 1866, part ii. pp. 27, 204, 251.

Footnote 340:

St. Cricq in ‘Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog.’ 1853, p. 286; Pott,

‘Zählmethode,’ p. 7.

Footnote 341:

Gabelentz, p. 89; Hale, l.c.

Footnote 342:

J. C. Hotten, ‘Slang Dictionary,’ p. 218.

Footnote 343:

‘Early History of Mankind,’ p. 106.

Footnote 344:

Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 91; Klemm, C. G. vol. iii. p. 383.

CHAPTER VIII.

MYTHOLOGY.

Mythic Fancy based, like other thought, on Experience—Mythology

affords evidence for studying laws of Imagination—Change in public

opinion as to credibility of Myths—Myths rationalized into Allegory

and History—Ethnological import and treatment of Myth—Myth to be

studied in actual existence and growth among modern savages and

barbarians—Original sources of Myth—Early doctrine of general

animation of Nature—Personification of Sun, Moon, and Stars;

Water-spout, Sand pillar, Rainbow, Waterfall, Pestilence—Analogy

worked into Myth and Metaphor—Myths of Rain, Thunder, &c.—Effect of

Language in formation of Myth—Material Personification primary,

Verbal Personification secondary—Grammatical Gender, male and

female, animate and inanimate, in relation to Myth—Proper Names of

objects in relation to Myth—Mental State proper to promote mythic

imagination—Doctrine of Werewolves—Phantasy and Fancy.

Among those opinions which are produced by a little knowledge, to be

dispelled by a little more, is the belief in an almost boundless

creative power of the human imagination. The superficial student, mazed

in a crowd of seemingly wild and lawless fancies, which he thinks to

have no reason in nature nor pattern in this material world, at first

concludes them to be new births from the imagination of the poet, the

tale-teller, and the seer. But little by little, in what seemed the most

spontaneous fiction, a more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry

and romance begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, an education that

has led up to each train of thought, a store of inherited materials from

out of which each province of the poet’s land has been shaped, and built

over, and peopled. Backward from our own times, the course of mental

history may be traced through the changes wrought by modern schools of

thought and fancy, upon an intellectual inheritance handed down to them

from earlier generations. And through remoter periods, as we recede more

nearly towards primitive conditions of our race, the threads which

connect new thought with old do not always vanish from our sight. It is

in large measure possible to follow them as clues leading back to that

actual experience of nature and life, which is the ultimate source of

human fancy. What Matthew Arnold has written of Man’s thoughts as he

floats along the River of Time, is most true of his mythic imagination:—

‘As is the world on the banks

So is the mind of the man.

Only the tract where he sails

He wots of: only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, are his.’

Impressions thus received the mind will modify and work upon,

transmitting the products to other minds in shapes that often seem new,

strange, and arbitrary, but which yet result from processes familiar to

our experience, and to be found at work in our own individual

consciousness. The office of our thought is to develop, to combine, and

to derive, rather than to create; and the consistent laws it works by

are to be discerned even in the unsubstantial structures of the

imagination. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, there is to be

recognized a sequence from cause to effect, a sequence intelligible,

definite, and where knowledge reaches the needful exactness, even

calculable.

There is perhaps no better subject-matter through which to study the

processes of the imagination, than the well-marked incidents of mythical

story, ranging as they do through every known period of civilization,

and through all the physically varied tribes of mankind. Here the divine

Maui of New Zealand, fishing up the island with his enchanted hook from

the bottom of the sea, will take his place in company with the Indian

Vishnu, diving to the depth of the ocean in his avatar of the Boar, to

bring up the submerged earth on his monstrous tusks; and here Baiame the

creator, whose voice the rude Australians hear in the rolling thunder,

will sit throned by the side of Olympian Zeus himself. Starting with the

bold rough nature-myths into which the savage moulds the lessons he has

learnt from his childlike contemplation of the universe, the

ethnographer can follow these rude fictions up into times when they were

shaped and incorporated into complex mythologic systems, gracefully

artistic in Greece, stiff and monstrous in Mexico, swelled into

bombastic exaggeration in Buddhist Asia. He can watch how the mythology

of classic Europe, once so true to nature and so quick with her

ceaseless life, fell among the commentators to be plastered with

allegory or euhemerized into dull sham history. At last, in the midst of

modern civilization, he finds the classic volumes studied rather for

their manner than for their matter, or mainly valued for their

antiquarian evidence of the thoughts of former times; while relics of

structures reared with skill and strength by the myth-makers of the past

must now be sought in scraps of nursery folk-lore, in vulgar

superstitions and old dying legends, in thoughts and allusions carried

on from ancient days by the perennial stream of poetry and romance, in

fragments of old opinion which still hold an inherited rank gained in

past ages of intellectual history. But this turning of mythology to

account as a means of tracing the history of laws of mind, is a branch

of science scarcely discovered till the nineteenth century. Before

entering here on some researches belonging to it, there will be

advantage in glancing at the views of older mythologists, to show

through what changes their study has at length reached a condition in

which it has a scientific value.

It is a momentous phase of the education of mankind, when the regularity

of nature has so imprinted itself upon men’s minds that they begin to

wonder how it is that the ancient legends which they were brought up to

hear with such reverent delight, should describe a world so strangely

different from their own. Why, they ask, are the gods and giants and

monsters no longer seen to lead their prodigious lives on earth—is it

perchance that the course of things is changed since the old days? Thus

it seemed to Pausanias the historian, that the wide-grown wickedness of

the world had brought it to pass that times were no longer as of old,

when Lykaon was turned into a wolf, and Niobe into a stone, when men

still sat as guests at table with the gods, or were raised like Herakles

to become gods themselves. Up to modern times, the hypothesis of a

changed world has more or less availed to remove the difficulty of

belief in ancient wonder-tales. Yet though always holding firmly a

partial ground, its application was soon limited for these obvious

reasons, that it justified falsehood and truth alike with even-handed

favour, and utterly broke down that barrier of probability which in some

measure has always separated fact from fancy. The Greek mind found other

outlets to the problem. In the words of Mr. Grote, the ancient legends

were cast back into an undefined past, to take rank among the hallowed

traditions of divine or heroic antiquity, gratifying to extol by

rhetoric, but repulsive to scrutinize in argument. Or they were

transformed into shapes more familiar to experience, as when Plutarch,

telling the tale of Theseus, begs for indulgent hearers to accept mildly

the archaic story, and assures them that he has set himself to purify it

by reason, that it may receive the aspect of history.[345] This process

of giving fable the aspect of history, this profitless art of

transforming untrue impossibilities into untrue possibilities, has been

carried on by the ancients, and by the moderns after them, especially

according to the two following methods.

Men have for ages been more or less conscious of that great mental

district lying between disbelief and belief, where room is found for all

mythic interpretation, good or bad. It being admitted that some legend

is not the real narrative which it purports to be, they do not thereupon

wipe it out from book and memory as simply signifying nothing, but they

ask what original sense may be in it, out of what older story it may be

a second growth, or what actual event or current notion may have

suggested its development into the state in which they find it? Such

questions, however, prove almost as easy to answer plausibly as to set;

and then, in the endeavour to obtain security that these off-hand

answers are the true ones, it becomes evident that the problem admits of

an indefinite number of apparent solutions, not only different but

incompatible. This radical uncertainty in the speculative interpretation

of myths is forcibly stated by Lord Bacon, in the preface to his ‘Wisdom

of the Ancients.’ ‘Neither am I ignorant,’ he says, ‘how fickle and

inconsistent a thing fiction is, as being subject to be drawn and

wrested any way, and how great the commodity of wit and discourse is,

that is able to apply things well, yet so as never meant by the first

authors.’ The need of such a caution may be judged of from the very

treatise to which Bacon prefaced it, for there he is to be seen plunging

headlong into the very pitfall of which he had so discreetly warned his

disciples. He undertakes, after the manner of not a few philosophers

before and after him, to interpret the classic myths of Greece as moral

allegories. Thus the story of Memnon depicts the destinies of rash young

men of promise; while Perseus symbolizes war, and when of the three

Gorgons he attacks only the mortal one, this means that only practicable

wars are to be attempted. It would not be easy to bring out into a

stronger light the difference between a fanciful application of a myth,

and its analysis into its real elements. For here, where the interpreter

believed himself to be reversing the process of myth-making, he was in

fact only carrying it a stage further in the old direction, and out of

the suggestion of one train of thought evolving another connected with

it by some more or less remote analogy. Any of us may practise this

simple art, each according to his own fancy. If, for instance, political

economy happens for the moment to lie uppermost in our mind, we may with

due gravity expound the story of Perseus as an allegory of trade:

Perseus himself is Labour, and he finds Andromeda, who is Profit,

chained and ready to be devoured by the monster Capital; he rescues her

and carries her off in triumph. To know anything of poetry or of

mysticism is to know this reproductive growth of fancy as an admitted

and admired intellectual process. But when it comes to sober

investigation of the processes of mythology, the attempt to penetrate to

the foundation of an old fancy will scarcely be helped by burying it yet

deeper underneath a new one.

Nevertheless, allegory has had a share in the development of myths which

no interpreter must overlook. The fault of the rationalizer lay in

taking allegory beyond its proper action, and applying it as a universal

solvent to reduce dark stories to transparent sense. The same is true of

the other great rationalizing process, founded also, to some extent, on

fact. Nothing is more certain than that real personages often have

mythic incidents tacked on to their history, and that they even figure

in tales of which the very substance is mythic. No one disbelieves in

the existence of Solomon because of his legendary adventure in the

Valley of Apes, nor of Attila because he figures in the Nibelungen Lied.

Sir Francis Drake is made not less but more real to us by the cottage

tales which tell how he still leads the Wild Hunt over Dartmoor, and

still rises to his revels when they beat at Buckland Abbey the drum that

he carried round the world. The mixture of fact and fable in traditions

of great men shows that legends containing monstrous fancy may yet have

a basis in historic fact. But, on the strength of this, the mythologists

arranged systematic methods of reducing legend to history, and thereby

contrived at once to stultify the mythology they professed to explain,

and to ruin the history they professed to develop. So far as the plan

consisted in mere suppression of the marvellous, a notion of its

trustworthiness may be obtained, as Sir G. W. Cox well puts it, in

rationalizing Jack the Giant-Killer by leaving out the giants. So far as

it treated legendary wonders as being matter-of-fact disguised in

metaphor, the mere naked statement of the results of the method is to

our minds its most cruel criticism. Thus already in classic times men

were declaring that Atlas was a great astronomer who taught the use of

the sphere, and was therefore represented with the world resting on his

shoulders. To such a pass had come the decay of myth into commonplace,

that the great Heaven-god of the Aryan race, the living personal Heaven

himself, Zeus the Almighty, was held to have been a king of Krete, and

the Kretans could show to wondering strangers his sepulchre, with the

very name of the great departed inscribed upon it. The modern

‘euhemerists’ (so called from Euhemeros of Messenia, a great professor

of the art in the time of Alexander) in part adopted the old

interpretations, and sometimes fairly left their Greek and Roman

teachers behind in the race after prosaic possibility. They inform us

that Jove smiting the giants with his thunderbolts was a king repressing

a sedition; Danae’s golden shower was the money with which her guards

were bribed; Prometheus made clay images, whence it was hyperbolically

said that he created man and woman out of clay; and when Daidalos was

related to have made figures which walked, this meant that he improved

the shapeless old statues, and separated their legs. Old men still

remember as the guides of educated opinion in their youth the learned

books in which these fancies are solemnly put forth; some of our school

manuals still go on quoting them with respect, and a few straggling

writers carry on a remnant of the once famous system of which the Abbé

Banier was so distinguished an exponent.[346] But it has of late fallen

on evil days, and mythologists in authority have treated it in so

high-handed a fashion as to bring it into general contempt. So far has

the feeling against the abuse of such argument gone, that it is now

really desirable to warn students that it has a reasonable as well as an

unreasonable side, and to remind them that some wild legends undoubtedly

do, and therefore that many others may, contain a kernel of historic

truth.

Learned and ingenious as the old systems of rationalizing myth have

been, there is no doubt that they are in great measure destined to be

thrown aside. It is not that their interpretations are proved

impossible, but that mere possibility in mythological speculation is now

seen to be such a worthless commodity, that every investigator devoutly

wishes there were not such plenty of it. In assigning origins to myths,

as in every other scientific enquiry, the fact is that increased

information, and the use of more stringent canons of evidence, have

raised far above the old level the standard of probability required to

produce conviction. There are many who describe our own time as an

unbelieving time, but it is by no means sure that posterity will accept

the verdict. No doubt it is a sceptical and a critical time, but then

scepticism and criticism are the very conditions for the attainment of

reasonable belief. Thus, where the positive credence of ancient history

has been affected, it is not that the power of receiving evidence has

diminished, but that the consciousness of ignorance has grown. We are

being trained to the facts of physical science, which we can test and

test again, and we feel it a fall from this high level of proof when we

turn our minds to the old records which elude such testing, and are even

admitted on all hands to contain statements not to be relied on.

Historical criticism becomes hard and exacting, even where the chronicle

records events not improbable in themselves; and the moment that the

story falls out of our scheme of the world’s habitual course, the ever

repeated question comes out to meet it—Which is the more likely, that so

unusual an event should have really happened, or that the record should

be misunderstood or false? Thus we gladly seek for sources of history in

antiquarian relics, in undesigned and collateral proofs, in documents

not written to be chronicles. But can any reader of geology say we are

too incredulous to believe wonders, if the evidence carry any fair

warrant of their truth? Was there ever a time when lost history was

being reconstructed, and existing history rectified, more zealously than

they are now by a whole army of travellers, excavators, searchers of old

charters, and explorers of forgotten dialects? The very myths that were

discarded as lying fables, prove to be sources of history in ways that

their makers and transmitters little dreamed of. Their meaning has been

misunderstood, but they have a meaning. Every tale that was ever told

has a meaning for the times it belongs to; even a lie, as the Spanish

proverb says, is a lady of birth (‘la mentira es hija de algo’). Thus,

as evidence of the development of thought, as records of long past

belief and usage, even in some measure as materials for the history of

the nations owning them, the old myths have fairly taken their place

among historic facts; and with such the modern historian, so able and

willing to pull down, is also able and willing to rebuild.

Of all things, what mythologic work needs is breadth of knowledge and of

handling. Interpretations made to suit a narrow view reveal their

weakness when exposed to a wide one. See Herodotus rationalizing the

story of the infant Cyrus, exposed and suckled by a bitch; he simply

relates that the child was brought up by a herdsman’s wife named Spakô

(in Greek Kynô), whence arose the fable that a real bitch rescued and

fed him. So far so good—for a single case. But does the story of Romulus

and Remus likewise record a real event, mystified in the self-same

manner by a pun on a nurse’s name, which happened to be a she-beast’s?

Did the Roman twins also really happen to be exposed, and brought up by

a foster-mother who happened to be called Lupa? Positively, the

‘Lempriere’s Dictionary’ of our youth (I quote the 16th edition of 1831)

gravely gives this as the origin of the famous legend. Yet, if we look

properly into the matter, we find that these two stories are but

specimens of a widespread mythic group, itself only a section of that

far larger body of traditions in which exposed infants are saved to

become national heroes. For other examples, Slavonic folk-lore tells of

the she-wolf and she-bear that suckled those superhuman twins, Waligora

the mountain-roller and Wyrwidab the oak-uprooter; Germany has its

legend of Dieterich, called Wolfdieterich from his foster-mother the

she-wolf; in India, the episode recurs in the tales of Satavahana and

the lioness, and Sing-Baba and the tigress; legend tells of Burta-Chino,

the boy who was cast into a lake, and preserved by a she-wolf to become

founder of the Turkish kingdom; and even the savage Yuracarés of Brazil

tell of their divine hero Tiri, who was suckled by a jaguar.[347]

Scientific myth-interpretation, on the contrary, is actually

strengthened by such comparison of similar cases. Where the effect of

new knowledge has been to construct rather than to destroy, it is found

that there are groups of myth-interpretations for which wider and deeper

evidence makes a wider and deeper foundation. The principles which

underlie a solid system of interpretation are really few and simple. The

treatment of similar myths from different regions, by arranging them in

large compared groups, makes it possible to trace in mythology the

operation of imaginative processes recurring with the evident regularity

of mental law; and thus stories of which a single instance would have

been a mere isolated curiosity, take their place among well-marked and

consistent structures of the human mind. Evidence like this will again

and again drive us to admit that even as ‘truth is stranger than

fiction,’ so myth may be more uniform than history.

There lies within our reach, moreover, the evidence of races both

ancient and modern, who so faithfully represent the state of thought to

which myth-development belongs, as still to keep up both the

consciousness of meaning in their old myths, and the unstrained

unaffected habit of creating new ones. Savages have been for untold

ages, and still are, living in the myth-making stage of the human mind.

It was through sheer ignorance and neglect of this direct knowledge how

and by what manner of men myths are really made, that their simple

philosophy has come to be buried under masses of commentators’ rubbish.

Though never wholly lost, the secret of mythic interpretation was all

but forgotten. Its recovery has been mainly due to modern students who

have with vast labour and skill searched the ancient language, poetry,

and folk-lore of our own race, from the cottage tales collected by the

brothers Grimm to the Rig-Veda edited by Max Müller. Aryan language and

literature now open out with wonderful range and clearness a view of the

early stages of mythology, displaying those primitive germs of the

poetry of nature, which later ages swelled and distorted till childlike

fancy sank into superstitious mystery. It is not proposed here to

enquire specially into this Aryan mythology, of which so many eminent

students have treated, but to compare some of the most important

developments of mythology among the various races of mankind, especially

in order to determine the general relation of the myths of savage tribes

to the myths of civilized nations. The argument does not aim at a

general discussion of the mythology of the world, numbers of important

topics being left untouched which would have to be considered in a

general treatise. The topics chosen are mostly such as are fitted, by

the strictness of evidence and argument applying to them, to make a

sound basis for the treatment of myth as bearing on the general

ethnological problem of the development of civilization. The general

thesis maintained is that Myth arose in the savage condition prevalent

in remote ages among the whole human race, that it remains comparatively

unchanged among the modern rude tribes who have departed least from

these primitive conditions, while even higher and later grades of

civilization, partly by retaining its actual principles, and partly by

carrying on its inherited results in the form of ancestral tradition,

have continued it not merely in toleration but in honour.

To the human intellect in its early childlike state may be assigned the

origin and first development of myth. It is true that learned critics,

taking up the study of mythology at the wrong end, have almost

habitually failed to appreciate its childlike ideas, conventionalized in

poetry or disguised as chronicle. Yet the more we compare the mythic

fancies of different nations, in order to discern the common thoughts

which underlie their resemblances, the more ready we shall be to admit

that in our childhood we dwelt at the very gates of the realm of myth.

In mythology, the child is, in a deeper sense than we are apt to use the

phrase in, father of the man. Thus, when in surveying the quaint fancies

and wild legends of the lower tribes, we find the mythology of the world

at once in its most distinct and most rudimentary form, we may here

again claim the savage as a representative of the childhood of the human

race. Here Ethnology and Comparative Mythology go hand in hand, and the

development of Myth forms a consistent part of the development of

Culture. If savage races, as the nearest modern representatives of

primæval culture, show in the most distinct and unchanged state the

rudimentary mythic conceptions thence to be traced onward in the course

of civilization, then it is reasonable for students to begin, so far as

may be, at the beginning. Savage mythology may be taken as a basis, and

then the myths of more civilized races may be displayed as compositions

sprung from like origin, though more advanced in art. This mode of

treatment proves satisfactory through almost all the branches of the

enquiry, and eminently so in investigating those most beautiful of

poetic fictions, to which may be given the title of Nature-Myths.

First and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the

facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature,

rising at its highest pitch to personification. This, no occasional or

hypothetical action of the mind, is inextricably bound in with that

primitive mental state where man recognizes in every detail of his world

the operation of personal life and will. This doctrine of Animism will

be considered elsewhere as affecting philosophy and religion, but here

we have only to do with its bearing on mythology. To the lower tribes of

man, sun and stars, trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal

animate creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies,

and performing their special functions in the universe with the aid of

limbs like beasts or of artificial instruments like men; or what men’s

eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be

shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half-human

creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. The

basis on which such ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed down

to poetic fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a broad

philosophy of nature, early and crude indeed, but thoughtful,

consistent, and quite really and seriously meant.

Let us put this doctrine of universal vitality to a test of direct

evidence, lest readers new to the subject should suppose it a modern

philosophical fiction, or think that if the lower races really express

such a notion, they may do so only as a poetical way of talking. Even in

civilized countries, it makes its appearance as the child’s early theory

of the outer world, nor can we fail to see how this comes to pass. The

first beings that children learn to understand something of are human

beings, and especially their own selves; and the first explanation of

all events will be the human explanation, as though chairs and sticks

and wooden horses were actuated by the same sort of personal will as

nurses and children and kittens. Thus infants take their first step in

mythology by contriving, like Cosette with her doll, ‘se figurer que

quelque chose est quelqu’un;’ and the way in which this childlike theory

has to be unlearnt in the course of education shows how primitive it is.

Even among full-grown civilized Europeans, as Mr. Grote appositely

remarks, ‘The force of momentary passion will often suffice to supersede

the acquired habit, and even an intelligent man may be impelled in a

moment of agonizing pain to kick or beat the lifeless object from which

he has suffered.’ In such matters the savage mind well represents the

childish stage. The wild native of Brazil would bite the stone he

stumbled over, or the arrow that had wounded him. Such a mental

condition may be traced along the course of history, not merely in

impulsive habit, but in formally enacted law. The rude Kukis of Southern

Asia were very scrupulous in carrying out their simple law of vengeance,

life for life; if a tiger killed a Kuki, his family were in disgrace

till they had retaliated by killing and eating this tiger, or another;

but further, if a man was killed by a fall from a tree, his relatives

would take their revenge by cutting the tree down, and scattering it in

chips.[348] A modern king of Cochin-China, when one of his ships sailed

badly, used to put it in the pillory as he would any other

criminal.[349] In classical times, the stories of Xerxes flogging the

Hellespont and Cyrus draining the Gyndes occur as cases in point, but

one of the regular Athenian legal proceedings is a yet more striking

relic. A court of justice was held at the Prytaneum, to try any

inanimate object, such as an axe or a piece of wood or stone, which had

caused the death of anyone without proved human agency, and this wood or

stone, if condemned, was in solemn form cast beyond the border.[350] The

spirit of this remarkable procedure reappears in the old English law

(repealed within the last reign), whereby not only a beast that kills a

man, but a cart-wheel that runs over him, or a tree that falls on him

and kills him, is deodand, or given to God, i.e. forfeited and sold for

the poor: as Bracton says, ‘Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deodanda.’

Dr. Reid comments on this law, declaring that its intention was not to

punish the ox or the cart as criminal, but ‘to inspire the people with a

sacred regard to the life of man.’[351] But his argument rather serves

to show the worthlessness of off-hand speculations on the origin of law,

like his own in this matter, unaided by the indispensable evidence of

history and ethnography. An example from modern folklore shows still at

its utmost stretch this primitive fancy that inert things are alive and

conscious. The pathetic custom of ‘telling the bees’ when the master or

mistress of a house dies, is not unknown in our own country. But in

Germany the idea is more fully worked out; and not only is the sad

message given to every bee-hive in the garden and every beast in the

stall, but every sack of corn must be touched and everything in the

house shaken, that they may know the master is gone.[352]

It will be seen presently how Animism, the doctrine of spiritual beings,

at once develops with and reacts upon mythic personification, in that

early state of the human mind which gives consistent individual life to

phenomena that our utmost stretch of fancy only avails to personify in

conscious metaphor. An idea of pervading life and will in nature far

outside modern limits, a belief in personal souls animating even what we

call inanimate bodies, a theory of transmigration of souls as well in

life as after death, a sense of crowds of spiritual beings sometimes

flitting through the air, but sometimes also inhabiting trees and rocks

and waterfalls, and so lending their own personality to such material

objects—all these thoughts work in mythology with such manifold

coincidence, as to make it hard indeed to unravel their separate

action.[353]

Such animistic origin of nature-myths shows out very clearly in the

great cosmic group of Sun, Moon, and Stars. In early philosophy

throughout the world, the Sun and Moon are alive and as it were human in

their nature. Usually contrasted as male and female, they nevertheless

differ in the sex assigned to each, as well as in their relations to one

another. Among the Mbocobis of South America, the Moon is a man and the

Sun his wife, and the story is told how she once fell down and an Indian

put her up again, but she fell a second time and set the forest blazing

in a deluge of fire.[354] To display the opposite of this idea, and at

the same time to illustrate the vivid fancy with which savages can

personify the heavenly bodies, we may read the following discussion

concerning eclipses, between certain Algonquin Indians and one of the

early Jesuit missionaries to Canada in the 17th century, Father Le

June:—‘Je leur ay demandé d’où venoit l’Eclipse de Lune et de Soleil;

ils m’ont respondu que la Lune s’éclipsoit ou paroissoit noire, à cause

qu’elle tenoit son fils entre ses bras, qui empeschoit que l’on ne vist

sa clarté. Si la Lune a un fils, elle est mariée, ou l’a été, leur

dis-je. Oüy dea, me dirent-ils, le Soleil est son mary, qui marche tout

le jour, et elle toute la nuict; et s’il s’éclipse, ou s’il s’obscurcit,

c’est qu’il prend aussi par fois le fils qu’il a eu de la Lune entre ses

bras. Oüy, mais ny la Lune ny le Soleil n’ont point de bras, leur

disois-je. Tu n’as point d’esprit; ils tiennent tousiours leurs arcs

bandés deuant eux, voilà pourquoy leurs bras ne paroissent point. Et sur

qui veulent-ils tirer? Hé qu’en scauons nous?’[355] A mythologically

important legend of the same race, the Ottawa story of Iosco, describes

Sun and Moon as brother and sister. Two Indians, it is said, sprang

through a chasm in the sky, and found themselves in a pleasant moonlit

land; there they saw the Moon approaching as from behind a hill, they

knew her at the first sight, she was an aged woman with white face and

pleasing air; speaking kindly to them, she led them to her brother the

Sun, and he carried them with him in his course and sent them home with

promises of happy life.[356] As the Egyptian Osiris and Isis were at

once brother and sister, and husband and wife, so it was with the

Peruvian Sun and Moon, Ynti and Quilla, father and mother of the Incas,

whose sister-marriage thus had in their religion at once a meaning and a

justification.[357] The myths of other countries, where such relations

of sex may not appear, carry on the same lifelike personification in

telling the ever-reiterated, never tedious tale of day and night. Thus

to the Mexicans it was an ancient hero who, when the old sun was burnt

out, and had left the world in darkness, sprang into a huge fire,

descended into the shades below, and arose deified and glorious in the

east as Tonatiuh the Sun. After him there leapt in another hero, but now

the fire had grown dim, and he arose only in milder radiance as Metztli

the Moon.[358]

If it be objected that all this may be mere expressive form of speech,

like a modern poet’s fanciful metaphor, there is evidence which no such

objection can stand against. When the Aleutians thought that if anyone

gave offence to the moon, he would fling down stones on the offender and

kill him,[359] or when the moon came down to an Indian squaw, appearing

in the form of a beautiful woman with a child in her arms, and demanding

an offering of tobacco and fur robes,[360] what conceptions of personal

life could be more distinct than these? When the Apache Indian pointed

to the sky and asked the white man, ‘Do you not believe that God, this

Sun (que Dios, este Sol), sees what we do and punishes us when it is

evil?’ it is impossible to say that this savage was talking in

rhetorical simile.[361] There was something in the Homeric contemplation

of the living personal Hêlios, that was more and deeper than metaphor.

Even in far later ages, we may read of the outcry that arose in Greece

against the astronomers, those blasphemous materialists who denied, not

the divinity only, but the very personality of the sun, and declared him

a huge hot ball. Later again, how vividly Tacitus brings to view the old

personification dying into simile among the Romans, in contrast with its

still enduring religious vigour among the German nations, in the record

of Boiocalcus pleading before the Roman legate that his tribe should not

be driven from their lands. Looking toward the sun, and calling on the

other heavenly bodies as though, says the historian, they had been there

present, the German chief demanded of them if it were their will to look

down upon a vacant soil? (Solem deinde respiciens, et caetera sidera

vocans, quasi coram interrogabat, vellentne contueri inane solum?)[362]

So it is with the stars. Savage mythology contains many a story of them,

agreeing through all other difference in attributing to them animate

life. They are not merely talked of in fancied personality, but personal

action is attributed to them, or they are even declared once to have

lived on earth. The natives of Australia not only say the stars in

Orion’s belt and scabbard are young men dancing a corroboree; they

declare that Jupiter, whom they call ‘Foot of Day’ (Ginabong-Bearp), was

a chief among the Old Spirits, that ancient race who were translated to

heaven before man came on earth.[363] The Esquimaux did not stop short

at calling the stars of Orion’s belt the Lost Ones, and telling a tale

of their being seal-hunters who missed their way home; but they

distinctly held that the stars were in old times men and animals, before

they went up into the sky.[364] So the North American Indians had more

than superficial meaning in calling the Pleiades the Dancers, and the

morning-star the Day-bringer; for among them stories are told like that

of the Iowas, of the star that an Indian had long gazed upon in

childhood, and who came down and talked with him when he was once out

hunting, weary and luckless, and led him to a place where there was much

game.[365] The Kasia of Bengal declare that the stars were once men:

they climbed to the top of a tree (of course the great heaven-tree of

the mythology of so many lands), but others below cut the trunk and left

them up there in the branches.[366] With such savage conceptions as

guides, the original meaning in the familiar classic personification of

stars can scarcely be doubted. The explicit doctrine of the animation of

stars is to be traced through past centuries, and down to our own.

Origen declares that the stars are animate and rational, moved with such

order and reason as it would be absurd to say irrational creatures could

fulfil. Pamphilius, in his apology for this Father, lays it down that

whereas some have held the luminaries of heaven to be animate and

rational creatures, while others have held them mere spiritless and

senseless bodies, no one may call another a heretic for holding either

view, for there is no open tradition on the subject, and even

ecclesiastics have thought diversely of it.[367] It is enough to mention

here the well-known mediæval doctrine of star-souls and star-angels, so

intimately mixed up with the delusions of astrology. In our own time the

theory of the animating souls of stars finds still here and there an

advocate, and De Maistre, prince and leader of reactionary philosophers,

maintains against modern astronomers the ancient doctrine of personal

will in astronomic motion, and even the theory of animated planets.[368]

Poetry has so far kept alive in our minds the old animative theory of

nature, that it is no great effort to us to fancy the waterspout a huge

giant or sea-monster, and to depict in what we call appropriate metaphor

its march across the fields of ocean. But where such forms of speech are

current among less educated races, they are underlaid by a distinct

prosaic meaning of fact. Thus the waterspouts which the Japanese see so

often off their coasts are to them long-tailed dragons, ‘flying up into

the air with a swift and violent motion,’ wherefore they call them

‘tatsmaki,’ ‘spouting dragons.’[369] Waterspouts are believed by some

Chinese to be occasioned by the ascent and descent of the dragon;

although the monster is never seen head and tail at once for clouds,

fishermen and sea-side folk catch occasional glimpses of him ascending

from the water and descending to it.[370] In the mediæval Chronicle of

John of Bromton there is mentioned a wonder which happens about once a

month in the Gulf of Satalia, on the Pamphylian coast. A great black

dragon seems to come in the clouds, letting down his head into the

waves, while his tail seems fixed to the sky, and this dragon draws up

the waves to him with such avidity that even a laden ship would be taken

up on high, so that to avoid this danger the crews ought to shout and

beat boards to drive the dragon off. However, concludes the chronicler,

some indeed say that this is not a dragon, but the sun drawing up the

water, which seems more true.[371] The Moslems still account for

waterspouts as caused by gigantic demons, such as that one described in

the ‘Arabian Nights:’—‘The sea became troubled before them, and there

arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and approaching

the meadow ... and behold it was a Jinnee, of gigantic stature.’[372]

The difficulty in interpreting language like this is to know how far it

is seriously and how far fancifully meant. But this doubt in no way goes

against its original animistic meaning, of which there can be no

question in the following story of a ‘great sea-serpent’ current among a

barbarous East African tribe. A chief of the Wanika told Dr. Krapf of a

great serpent which is sometimes seen out at sea, reaching from the sea

to the sky, and appearing especially during heavy rain. ‘I told them,’

says the missionary, ‘that this was no serpent, but a waterspout.’[373]

Out of the similar phenomenon on land there has arisen a similar group

of myths. The Moslem fancies the whirling sand-pillar of the desert to

be caused by the flight of an evil jinn, and the East African simply

calls it a demon (p’hepo). To traveller after traveller who gazes on

these monstrous shapes gliding majestically across the desert, the

thought occurs that the well-remembered ‘Arabian Nights’’ descriptions

rest upon personifications of the sand-pillars themselves, as the

gigantic demons into which fancy can even now so naturally shape

them.[374]