e bush
well after I pulled it out' If a horse wounds its foot by treading on
a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve the nail, clean it
and grease it every day to prevent the wound from festering." Here the
heat and festering of the wounds are held to be qualities of the axe,
thorn or nail, which have been communicated to the person or animal
wounded by contact. If these qualities of the instrument are reduced
by cleaning and oiling it, then that portion of them communicated
to the wound, which was originally held to be a severed part of
the life and qualities of the instrument, will similarly be made
cool and easy. It is not probable that the people of Suffolk really
believe this at present, but they retain the method of treatment
arising from the belief without being able to explain it. Similarly
the Hindus must have thought that the results produced by the tools
of artisans working on materials, and by the plough on the earth,
were communicated by these instruments volitionally through contact;
and this is why they worship once or twice a year the implements of
their profession as the givers of the means of subsistence. All the
stories of magic swords, axes, impenetrable shields, sandals, lamps,
carpets and so on originally arose from the same belief.

60. The faculty of counting. Confusion of the individual and the
species.

But primitive man not only considered the body as a homogeneous mass
with the life and qualities distributed equally over it. He further,
it may be suggested, did not distinguish between the individual
and the species. The reason for this was that he could not count,
and had no idea of numbers. The faculty of counting appears to have
been acquired very late. Messrs. Spencer and Gillan remark of the
aborigines of Central Australia: [126] "While in matters such as
tracking, which are concerned with their everyday life, and upon
efficiency in which they actually depend for their livelihood,
the natives show conspicuous ability, there are other directions in
which they are as conspicuously deficient. This is perhaps shown most
clearly in the matter of counting. At Alice Springs they occasionally
count, sometimes using their fingers in doing so, up to five, but
frequently anything beyond four is indicated by the word _oknira_,
meaning 'much' or 'great.' One is _nintha_, two _thrama_ or _thera_,
three _mapitcha_, four _therankathera_, five _therankathera-nintha_."
The form of these w