ture writing, re-representing
the things meant, preceded developmentally any kind of symbolization
representing the number by mere one-one correspondence with
non-particularized symbols. It is plausible, although I have no
anthropological authority for the statement, that the prevalence of
finger words as number symbols (cf. infra) is originally a consequence
of the fact that our organization makes the hand the natural instrument
of pointing.

The difficulty of passing from concrete representations to abstract
symbols has been keenly stated by Conant (_The Number Concept_, pp.
72-73), although his terminology is that of an old psychology and the
limitations implied for the primitive mind are limitations of practice
rather than of capacity as Mr. Conant seems to believe. "An abstract
conception is something quite foreign to the essentially primitive mind,
as missionaries and explorers have found to their chagrin. The savage
can form no mental concept of what civilized man means by such a word as
_soul_; nor would his idea of the abstract number 5 be much clearer.
When he says _five_, he uses, in many cases at least, the same word that
serves him when he wishes to say _hand_; and his mental concept when he
says _five_ is a hand. The concrete idea of a closed fist, of an open
hand with outstretched fingers, is what is uppermost in his mind. He
knows no more and cares no more about the pure number 5 than he does
about the law of conservation of energy. He sees in his mental picture
only the real, material image, and his only comprehension of the number
is, "these objects are as many as the fingers on my hand." Then, in the
lapse of the long interval of centuries which intervene between lowest
barbarism and highest civilization, the abstract and concrete become
slowly dissociated, the one from the other. First the actual hand
picture fades away, and the number is recognized without the original
assistance furnished by the derivation of the word. But the number is
still for a long time a certain number _of objects_, and not an
independent concept."

An excellent fur trader's story, reported to me by Mr. Dewey, suggests a
further impulse to count besides that given by the need of keeping a
tally, namely, the need of making one thing correspond to another in a
business transaction. The Indian laid down one skin and the trader two
dollars; if he proposed to count several skins at once and pay for all
together, the former repli