ON TRACES OF THE EAULY MENTilL CONDITION OF MAN. 



By Edward Burnet Taylor, Esq. 



[FROM THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.] 



If an antiquary is asked liis opinion as to the early condition of mankind, lie 

 will probably take up the question with reference to an excellent test of man's 

 civilization, the quality of the tools and weapons he uses. He vv-ill show how, 

 within our own knowledge, the use of metal instruments has succeeded the use 

 of sharpened stones, or shells, or bones; how the stone axes and arrow-heads 

 found buried in the ground prove that in every great district of the world a Stone 

 Age has prevailed at some more or less remote period; and lastly, how recent 

 geological researches have displayed to us the traces of a Stone Age extraordi- 

 narily low and rude in character, and belonging to a time as extraordinarily 

 remote in antiquity. The history of man, as thus told by a study of the imple- 

 ments he has used, is the history of an upward development, not indeed a gradual 

 steady progress of each family or tribe, but a general succession of higher pro- 

 cesses to lower ones. 



Now there also exists evidence, by means of which it is possible still to trace, 

 in the history of man's mental condition, an upward progress, a succession of 

 higher intellectual processes and opinions to lower ones. This movement has 

 accompanied his progress in the material arts during a long but undefined period 

 of his life upon the earth ; and of this evidence, and of the lines of argument 

 that may be drawn through it, the object of the present discourse is to give a 

 few illustrative examples. 



I. In the first place, the art of counting may be examined from this point of 

 view. We ourselves learnt to count when we were children, by the aid of a 

 series of words, one, two, three, four, and so on, which wo were taught to associate 

 with certain numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and can thus reckon up t<j the largest imaginable 

 number, and down to the smallest imaginable fraction. But if we look round 

 among other tribes of men we find a very different state of things. As we go 

 lower in the scale of civilization, it becomes easier and easier to puzzle a man 

 with the counting of 20 objects, or even of 1 0, and to drive him to the use of 

 nature's counting machine, his fingers. When we reach the low level of the 

 savages of the Brazilian forests or of Australia, we find people to whom 3 or 4 

 are large numbers. One tribe, described by Mr. Oldfield, reckoned one, two, 

 and then hool-tha, "many;" but when their poor word-language fails them they 

 fall back on gesture-reckoning. Mr. Oldfield tells us, for instance, how he got 

 from a native the number of men killed in a certain fight. The man began to 

 think over the names, taking a finger for each, and thus, after manj^ unsuccessful 

 trials, he at last brought out the result by holding up his hand three times, to 

 show that the number was 15. 



Now our words, one, two, three, four, &c., have no etymology to us, but among 

 a large proportion of the lower races numerals have a meaning ; as among many 

 tribes of North and South America and West Africa are found such expressions 

 as, for 5, "a whole hand," and for 6, "one to the other hand;" 10, "both hands," 



