166 



EASTER ISLAND. 



than the convention known as percentage? As well propose the doc- 

 trine that gunny bags are truer textile art than the web which flows 

 from Jacquard's loom in Lyons. It is only when we employ the higher 

 processes that mathematics becomes instinct with vitality. The sim- 

 plest arithmetic is as artificial as any ; at its very beginning an arbitrary 

 choice is made and arithmetic is discordant on the very tips of the 

 convenient fingers, for humanity splits upon the doctrine and practice 

 of counting the finger that sticks up or the finger turned down, and the 

 whole science is astray from the start.* 



Table 44. 



It is not now really necessary to seek to interpret what meaning may 

 underlie these diverse sets of figures. Speech by speech the archipelago 

 has been rigidly subjected to two independent inquisitions; whatever 

 sense may underlie the results in any one speech must underlie the 

 results in each other, for the method of examination has been the same. 

 We are justified, therefore, in a comparison of results. 



In Table 44 we shall see that two curves, qualitative and quantitative, 

 of Rapanui exhibit a marked individuality. The speech is widely dif- 

 ferent from Mangareva, Tahiti, and the Marquesas ; the respective curves 

 are of different profiles. The only language of the province which can at 

 all be brought into association with Rapanui is the Paumotu ; they lie 

 close together in the upper field, and far apart from the other languages. 

 The two curves interlace in each series, each twice crosses the other. 

 We have evidence of the association of Rapanui and the Paumotu. 



Now what conclusion are we to derive from this painful and minute 

 examination? If from these computations and tabulations we can 

 extract no tale of the history of folk movement in this province of South- 

 east Polynesia, then is all the work as uninspired and uninspiring as the 

 minute toil of the petty race of book-keepers, industrially efficient to 



*"The Polynesian Wanderings," page 365. To the instances there noted of Melanesian 

 usage I would add the following from a different culture seat and phase: "When he says 

 'one ' he does not touch his outstretched first finger, as an English boy might do, but doubles 

 up the little finger of his left hand by using the first finger of the right hand to close the little 

 finger. The third and fourth fingers, bent on to the palm of the hand, indicate the number 

 two. The first five numbers are always counted on the left hand by doubling up its fingers, 

 one after another, by means of the forefinger of the right hand. For five the whole hand is 

 shut. Six is sometimes counted by closing the left hand, opening it, and again doubling up 

 the little finger. Sometimes the numbers after five are counted on the right hand by closing 

 the fingers one by one, always beginning by closing the smallest finger first." Mrs. Leslie 

 Milne, "The Shans at Home," page 53. 



