846 PRIMITIVE NUMBERS [ETH. ANN.19 
throughout the earlier eons of human development. A clue to the 
demotic process is easily found in widespread horror of left-handed- 
ness. especially among primitive peoples; the clue becomes definite in 
the light of systematic infanticide among many tribes, whereby all 
manner of natal deformity is eliminated; it becomes conclusive in the 
light of the customs of those American tribes who habitually eliminate 
the sinistral offspring as monsters betokening the wrath of the powers. 
So, apparently initiated by slight physiologic difference and unques- 
tionably intensified by demotic selection, right-handedness became even 
more predominant among primitive men than among their less super- 
stitious descendants; the dexter and dextrous hand came to be exalted 
in scores of languages as ‘‘ The One That Knows How” or ** The Wise 
One,” while the sinister hand was degraded by linguistic opprobrium 
unto a symbol of evil and outer darkness. Naturally and necessarily 
the bilaterally symmetric division of the Ego into Right and Left fell 
into superposition with the antecedent Face-Back concept, and pro- 
duced a quatern notion such as that expressed in the Cult of the Quar- 
ters. Happily this transition is crystallized in the language of the 
Pitta-Pitta of Queensland, which possesses directional inflections indi- 
cating Front and Back reckoned from the Ego; and it is especially 
significant (in connection with the bimanual count inferred by W. E. 
Roth) that the inflection for Front applies also to (right?) Side.* 
It is evident that the passage from the Cult of the Halves to the 
Cult of the Quarters marked a considerable intellectual advance, both 
in extension and in intension; and it is evident, too, that the transition 
must have introduced novel and distinctive thought-modes, susceptible 
of growth into habits and hence of crystallization into instincts. Con- 
cordantly, men in several stages of culture as well as certain higher 
animals are found to display habits and instincts reflecting some such 
system of coordinates as that formulated in the Cult of the Quarters. 
The habits are especially prominent among the many primitive folks 
who ceremoniously yenerate the cardinal points, systematically orient 
the doorways and other st ructural features of their houses, and main- 
tain social relations in terms of direction. ‘The instincts are particu- 
larly conspicuous among horses and kine and swine with their 
remarkable direction-sense, and most notable of all in the mule with 
its curiously concentrated hereditary intelligence, and the carrier- 
pigeon with its carefully cultivated homing-sense. In the present 
state of knowledge it would be impracticable to trace confidently the 
entire course of development of the direction-sense in animals and 
men, partly because so few naturalists have sought, like Ernest Seton- 
Thompson, to interpret the habits and instincts of lower animals, 
partly because so few anthropologists have really entered the esoteric 
life of primitive peoples; yet it is easy to perceive the general trend 

1 Ethnological Studies; p. 2. 
