914 Dynamic TJieory. 



teen, foot-three, and so on ; twenty is feet finished, or in other cases 

 ' man, ' because a man has ten fingers and ten toes, thus making twenty. 

 Among the Jaruroes the word for forty is ' noenipume ' i. e. , two men, 

 from noeni, two, and canipume, men." 



The natives of Guiana for five say "my one hand," and for ten my 

 two hands. From ten to twejity they use the toes. Twenty is "one 

 man." Forty-five is expressed by saying " two men and one hand." The 

 Caribs for ten use words meaning the fingers of both hands, and for 

 twentj' the words meant fingers and toes. The Abipones for four use 

 words meaning the " fingers of an Emu." ( It has four toes.) For five, 

 ten and twenty, they use words meaning fingers and toes. The Malays 

 and Polynesians use for five, a word which in one of the languages 

 means hand. For six, the Zulus say "take the thumb." 



According to Humboldt, the word pencha, in Persian, is hand, and 

 pendji is five. The Sanskrit for five is pancan^ derived from pane, 

 which means spread out, as the digits of the hand. Five in Greek is 

 pente] in Armoric, a Celtic dialect, it is pemp ; Welsh, pump ; German, 

 funf\ Saxon, fif. So it appears our five means hand. The word ' 'digits, " 

 which we apply to the numerals, means fingers, and the characters T, II, 

 III, are pictures of fingers held up ; Y is the whole hand raised, the 

 left prong representing the thumb, and the right the other four fingers. 

 The two hands, or ten, are represented by VV or X, and IY and YI 

 are pictures of a hand with a finger subtracted or added. The Sanskrit 

 character for five probably represented a hand also. The surmise of 

 Lubbock that the decimal system of numerals arose from the fact that 

 we have ten fingers, is quite probable. He says either 8 or 12 would 

 have been more convenient than 10, since 8 can be quartered by whole 

 numbers, and 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6. 



There cannot be words for which there are no ideas, although the re- 

 verse may in some degree be true. Inchoate or partially developed 

 ideas, may remain without expression and dumb if no necessity for 

 their expression arises. For example, in the Hawaian dialect ' ' black 

 and blue and dark green are not distinguished, nor bright yellow and 

 white, nor brown and red. This arises from no obtuseness of sense, 

 for the slightest variation of tint is immediately detected by the people, 

 but from sluggishness of mind. In the same way the Hawaians are 

 said to have but one term for love, friendship, gratitude, benevolence, 

 esteem, &c. , which they call indiscriminately aloha, though the same 

 people distinguish in their dictionary between aneane, a gentle breeze ; 

 matani, wind ; puhi, blowing or puffing with the mouth ; and hano, 

 blowing through the nose, asthma." ( M. Miiller.) We thus see that 

 words do not appear till ideas require them. And no matter what the 

 brain capacity, ideas do not spring into existence till the brain is acted 



