74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or of its activities into tlie objective world of Nature finds its ricliest 

 illustrations in poetry,* where it may be held to represent less the 

 elaborate artifice of a cultured mind than one of the most primitive 

 tendencies of that mind powerfully swayed by emotion. Yet the 

 process belongs equally to the more prosaic efforts which man puts 

 forth to utilize the objects of his environment in the interests of self- 

 maintenance. One of the earliest of these is seen in the use of words 

 describing parts of the body to facilitate the description of the ex- 

 ternal world in its numerical aspects. Thus the Chinese use for 

 " two " certain syllables {ny and ceul) which originally mean " ears," 

 the Hottentots employing the word for " hand " in the same sense. 

 In middle high German the word for " sheaf " (Schoch) signifies 

 sixty, and is applied in that sense to all kinds of objects. The Letts, 

 owing to their habit of throwing fish three at a time, employ the word 

 mettens, " a throw," in the sense of " three." Among the same 

 people flounders are tied in lots of thirty, whence has arisen the prac- 

 tice of designating thirty by the word kaJilis, meaning " cord." The 

 Quichuas attach the significance of ten to the word chuncu, " heap." 

 The Gallas word for " half " has been traced to the verb chaha, " to 

 break," and is the equivalent of our own word " fraction." So in a 

 large number of languages the term for hand signifies " five," " two 

 hands " meaning ten, and " man " (" two hands and two feet ") 

 twenty. 



A like origin must be claimed for the measures of space and 

 weight needed by man in his industrial and commercial activities. 

 The finger, the thumb, the hand, the palm, the forearm, the foot — 

 the extended arms, as in the ancient orgya, and the extended legs, as 

 in the modern yard — ^have all played a fundamental part in determin- 

 ing the standard measures of the civilized world. To the same class 

 belong the 71;?;, the extent of field that could be worked by a laborer 

 in one day; the stade, the distance which a good runner could traverse 

 without stopping to take rest; also measures of time, such as the old 

 division of the day based on the length of a man's shadow. 



The human body was thus of primary importance as a means of 

 comprehending and coming into relations with the external world. 

 But men also sought to make the environment intelligible to them 

 by projecting into it the images gained from the more general aspects 

 of their life. Such phrases as " pig of iron," " monkey wrench," 

 " battering ram," " lifting crane," remind us of a period in which 

 objects were actually shaped so as to enable the mind to accommodate 

 itself more completely to the thought of their vitality. The Greek 

 sailing vessel, for example, was so constructed — with the body of a 

 bird, with cheeks, eyes, and projecting ears — as to make it seem to 

 ♦ See Henle. Poetische Personification. 



