288 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



the godlike intellect evidently will not apply here. If the 

 emotions of the German and his intellectual perceptions of 

 the fitness of harmonious sounds for expressing emotion are 

 so deep and subtle and varied as to result in the production 

 of choruses like those of Handel and symphonies like those 

 of Beethoven, on the other hand the crude emotions of the 

 Australian are quite adequately expressed by the discordant 

 yells and howls which constitute the sole kind of music ap- 

 preciable by his undeveloped ears. "VVe look in vain here for 

 traces of the keen aesthetic sense which in a measure links 

 together our intellectual and moral natures. Again, if the 

 American student has been known to be actuated by such 

 noble ethical impulses and guided by such lofty conceptions 

 of morality as to leave his comfortable home and his 



them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding rule is to an 

 English school-boy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand 

 remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units. Yet they 

 seldom lose oxen ; the way in which they discover the loss of one is not by 

 the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a face they 

 know. When bartering is going on, each sheep must bs paid for separately. 

 Thus, suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, 

 it would sorely puzzle a Dammara to take two sheep and give him four sticks. 

 I have done so, and seen a man put two of the sticks apart, and take a sight 

 over them at one of the sheep he was about to sell. Havifg satisfied himself 

 that that one was honestly paid for, and finding to his surprise that exactly two 

 sticks remained in hand to settle the account for the other sheep, he would 

 be atflicted with doubts ; the transaction seemed to come out too ' pat ' to be 

 correct, and he would refer back to the first couple of sticks ; and then his 

 mind got hazy and confused, and wandered from one sbeep to the other, and 

 he broke off the transaction until two sticks were put into his hand, and one 

 sheep driven away, and then the other two sticks given him, and the second 

 sheep driven away. . . . Once while I watched a Dammara floundering 

 hopelessly in a cilculation on one side of me, I observed Dinah, my spaniel, 

 equally embarrassed on the other. She was overlooking half-a-dozen of her 

 new-born puppies, which had been removed two or three times from her, and 

 her anxiety was excessive, as she tried to find out if they were all present, or 

 if any were still missing. She kept puzzling and mnning her eyes over them, 

 backwards and forwards, but could not satisfy herself. She evidently had a 

 Tague notion of counting, but the figure was too large for her brain. Taking 

 the two as they stood, dog and Dammara, the comparison reflected no great 

 honour on the man." — Galton, Tropical South Africa, p. 132, cited in LuIh 

 bock. Origin of Civilization, Amer. ed., p. 294. See also Tylor, Primitivt 

 Culture, vol. i. pp. 218 — 246. Probably the dual number, in grammar, 

 "preserves the memorial of that stage of thought when all beyond two wa« 

 kn idea of iBdefinite number." Id. p. 240. 



