MCGEE] PRIMITIVE COUNTING 833 
In short, it can not be too often stated or too strongly emphasized 
that primitive thought is unlike the finer product of contemporary 
intellectuality. While the differences are many, the most conspicuous 
are those connected with the pervading mysticism and prevailing 
egoism of primitive thinkers, both magnified in their influence by the 
fewness of concurrent intellectual stimuli and motives; so that pre- 
seriptorial culture may justly be regarded as the outgrowth and out- 
showing of that mysticism-egoism which arose early in the unwritten 
past, which began to decline with the birth of writing, but which still 
retains some hold on the minds of men. 
PRIMITIVE COUNTING AND NUMBER SYSTEMS 
NUMERATION 
Simple counting is an accomplishment common to men and many 
lower animals. The special appreciation of numbers sometimes dis- 
played by horses, dogs, and pigs may be due to human association, 
while the geometric sense of the bee may be considered mechanical 
merely; yet the well-known ability of the crow to count (or at least 
to discriminate units) up to six or seven, the similar faculty of the 
fox, and the habits of wasps in providing fixed numbers of spiders for 
their unborn progeny, as well as various other examples, demonstrate 
a native capacity for numerical concepts on the part of birds and 
mammals and insects. 
Apparently similar is the numerical capacity of various lowly tribes 
of different continents: Numerous Australian tribes are described as 
counting laboriously up to two, three, four, or six, sometimes doub- 
ling two to make four or three to make six, and in other ways reveal- 
ing a quasi-binary system; though both Curr and Conant opine that 
‘*no Australian in his wild state could ever count intelligently to 
seven.”’ Certain Brazilian tribes are also described as counting only 
to two, three, or four, usually with an additional term for many; 
while the Tasmanians counted commenly to two and sometimes to four, 
and were able to reach five by the addition of one to the limital 
number.” 
The analogy between the counting of the tribesmen and that of the 
animals is not so close as the bare records suggest, since the descrip- 
tions of the tribal reckoning relate to systems of vocal numeration 
rather than to actual ability in discrimination and enumeration; more- 
over, most of the tribesmen reveal the germ of notation in the use of 
sticks, notches, knetted cords, and the like to make tangible the 
numerical values—something which lower animals never do so far as 
is known. Actually the savages, even those of lowliest culture, 

1The Number Concept, by L. L. Conant, 1896, p. 27; The Australian Race, by E. M. Curr, 1886, vol. I, 
p. 32. 
2The Aborigines of Tasmania, by H. Ling Roth, 1890, p. 147. 
19 ETH, PT 2 1s 

