52 THE WORLD MACHINE 



Long centuries, millenniums even, doubtless elapsed between 

 what we may term the tame gorilla stage and that in which 

 the wonder-working slave had become augur, astrologer, 

 alchemist, and austromant. It was long ages later still when 

 from these rude beginnings, more than half mysterious, we 

 may imagine, even to their practisers, that anything like a 

 rational world conception, to say nothing of a mechanical world 

 conception, could arise. Let us look about for the first steps. 



Sometimes in the history of ideas the history of a word may 

 shed a deal of light. It is of some curious interest to know 

 that once learning, knowledge, and mathematics were one. This 

 indeed was the meaning of the Greek verb mathemata, " to 

 know." For the rest, one of the most primitive of human 

 needs was a method of counting. If we look about a little we 

 shall perceive that the earliest idea of fixity, of certainty, of 

 inevitable sequence, must have arisen from the sense of fixity 

 of numbers. 



When man had learned to put together 2 and 2, to subtract, 

 to multiply, and divide, he must have seemed face to face with 

 a great light. Mere numbers now seem to us such lifeless 

 abstractions, that the idea they could have once been almost 

 the basis of a religion seems absurd. We know, however, that 

 this was true. No doubt a curious sense of coincidence that 

 is, of mystery must have come to the first man who noted 

 that the first four figures of the counting scale, put together, 

 sum up ten. Remember that all systems of notation were 

 decimal systems, arising from the chance number of fingers 

 upon the two hands. The Pythagoreans named the first four 

 figures the " grand tetrad." There was a similar mystery about 

 the number " seven," the number of planets or " wanderers " 

 observed in the sky. The perfect number was twelve, doubtless 

 because to them there were twelve lunations in the year, and 

 because it divided into so many even parts. Even to Plato, 

 numbers seemed the basis of all things. 



Long before this a system of notation had been devised ; 

 its beginnings were crude enough. A single stroke counted for 

 one, two strokes set side by side for two, and so on. This grew 

 very clumsy before many digits had been told off, so various 

 combinations were tried. The Babylonian character for ten, 

 Grotefend believes to have been a rude picture of the two hands 



