464 
DARWINISM 
CHAP. 
required to account for them. If this can be clearly shown 
for any one or more of the special faculties of intellectual man, 
Ave shall be justified in assuming that the same unknown cause 
or power may have had a much Avider influence, and may 
have profoundly influenced the Avhole course of his develop¬ 
ment. 
The Origin of the Mathematical Faculty. 
We have ample evidence that, in all the loAver races of man, 
Avhat may be termed the mathematical faculty is, either absent, 
or, if present, quite unexercised. The Bushmen and the 
Brazilian Wood-Indians are said not to count beyond tAvo. 
Many Australian tribes only have words for one and tAvo, 
which are combined to make three, four, five, or six, beyond 
Avhich they do not count. The Damaras of South Africa 
only count to three; and Mr. Galton gives a curious descrip¬ 
tion of how one of them Avas hopelessly puzzled when he had 
sold two sheep for tAvo sticks of tobacco each, and received 
four sticks in payment. He could only find out that he AA r as 
correctly paid by taking tAvo sticks and then giving one sheep, 
then receiving tAvo sticks more and giving the other sheep. 
Even the comparatively intellectual Zulus can only count up 
to ten by using the hands and fingers. The Ahts of North-West 
America count in nearly the same manner, and most of the 
tribes of South America are no further advanced . 1 The 
Kaffirs have great herds of cattle, and if one is lost they miss 
it immediately, but this is not by counting, but by noticing 
the absence of one they knoAv ; just as in a large family or a 
school a boy is missed without going through the process of 
counting. SomeAvhat higher races, as the Esquimaux, can 
count up to twenty by using the hands and the feet; and 
other races get even further than this by saying “ one man ” 
for tAventy, “ tAvo men ” for forty, and so on, equivalent to our 
rural mode of reckoning by scores. From the fact that so 
many of the existing savage races can only count to four or 
five, Sir John Lubbock thinks it improbable that our earliest 
ancestors could have counted as high as ten . 2 
1 Lubbock’s Origin of Civilisation, fourth edition, pp. 434-440 ; Tylor’s 
Primitive Culture, chap. vii. 
2 It has been recently stated that some of these facts are erroneous, and 
that some Australians can keep accurate reckoning up to 100, or more, when 
