ed "too much cheatem." The result, however,
demanded a tally either by the fingers, a pebble, or a mark made in the
sand, and as the magnitude of such transactions grows the need of a
specific number symbol becomes ever more acute.

The first obstacle, then, to overcome--and it has already been
successfully passed by many primitive peoples--is the need of fortuitous
attainment of a numerical symbol, which is not the mere repeated symbol
of the things numbered. Significantly, this symbol is usually derived
from the hand, suggesting gestures of tallying, and not from the words
of already developed language. Consequently, number words relate
themselves for the most part to the hand, and written number symbols,
which are among the earliest writings of most peoples, tend to depict it
as soon as they have passed beyond the stage mentioned above of merely
repeating the symbol of the things numbered. W. C. Eells, in writing of
the Number Systems of the North American Indians (_Am. Math. Mo._, Nov.,
1913; pp. 263-72), finds clear linguistic evidence for a digital origin
in about 40% of the languages examined. Of the non-digital instances, 1
was sometimes connected with the first personal pronoun, 2 with roots
meaning separation, 3, rarely, meaning more, or plural as distinguished
from the dual, just as the Greek uses a plural as well as a dual in
nouns and verbs, 4 is often the perfect, complete right. It is often a
sacred number and the base of a quarternary system. Conant (_loc. cit._
p. 98) also gives a classification of the meanings of simple number
words for more advanced languages; and even in them the hand is
constantly in evidence, as in 5, the hand; 10, two hands, half a man,
when fingers and toes are both considered, or a man, when the hands
alone are considered; 20, one man, two feet. The other meanings hang
upon the ideas of existence, piece, group, beginning, for 1; and
repetition, division, and collection for higher numerals.

A peculiar difficulty lies in the fact that when once numbering has
become a self-conscious effort, the collection of things to be numbered
frequently tends to exceed the number of names that have become
available. Sometimes the difficulty is met by using a second man when
the fingers and toes of the first are used up, sometimes by a method of
repetition with the record of the number of the repetition itself added
to the numerical significance of the whole process. Hence arise the
various sy