ords is interesting, because it is clear that
the word for four is two and two, or twice two, and the word for
five is two and two and one. These words indicate the prolonged and
painful efforts which must have been necessary to count as far as
five, and this though in other respects the Australian natives show
substantial mental development, having a most complicated system of
exogamy, and sometimes two personal names for each individual. Again,
the Andamanese islanders, despite the extraordinary complexity of
their agglutinative language, have no names for the numerals beyond
two. [127] It is said that the Majhwar tribe can only count up to
three, while among the Bhatras the qualification for being a village
astrologer, who foretells the character of the rainfall and gives
auspicious days for sowing and harvest, is the ability to count
a certain number of posts. The astrologer's title is Meda Gantia,
or Counter of Posts. The above facts demonstrate that counting is a
faculty acquired with difficulty after considerable mental progress,
and primitive man apparently did not feel the necessity for it. [128]
But if he could not count, it seems a proper deduction that his
eye would not distinguish a number of animals of the same species
together, because the ability to do this, and to appraise distinct
individuals of like appearance appears to depend ultimately on the
faculty of counting. Major Hendley, a doctor and therefore a skilled
observer, states that the Bhils were unable to distinguish colours
or to count numbers, apparently on account of their want of words
to express themselves. [129] Now it seems clearly more easy for the
eye to discriminate between opposing colours than to distinguish
a number of individuals of the same species together. There are a
few things which we still cannot count, such as the blades of grass,
the ears of corn, drops of rain, snowflakes, and hailstones. All of
these things are still spoken of in the singular, though this is well
known to be scientifically incorrect. We say an expanse of grass,
a field of corn, and so on, as if the grass and corn were all one
plant instead of an innumerable quantity of plants. Apparently when
primitive man saw a number of animals or trees of the same species
together, the effect on him must have been exactly the same as that
of a field of grass or corn on us. He could be conscious only of an
indefinite sense of magnitude. But he did not know, as we do in th