212 - RiaHTEIANDEDNESS. 



untrustworthy, in a moral sense; and botli ideas are found alike ia 

 barbarous and classical languages. An interesting example of the 

 former occurs in Ovid's Fasti, iii. 869, where the poet speaks of the 

 flight of Helle and her brother on the golden-fleeced ram, and describes 

 her as grasping its horn " with her feeble left hand, when she made of 

 herself a name for the waters/' i. e., by falling off and being drowned : 



" Utque fngam capiant aries uitidissimas auro 

 Traditur ; ille vehit per freta louga duos ; 

 Dicitur informa cornu tenuisse sinistra 

 Feinina cum de se nomina fecit aquEe." 



In the depreciatory moral sense, Plautus, in the '^ Persa," ii. 2, 44, 

 calls the left hand furtijica, thievish. " Estne h»c manus? Ubi 

 ilia altera est fartifica Ia3va V So in like manner the term in all its 

 forms acquires a depreciatory sigoificance, and is even applied to 

 sinister looks. 



Another line of investigation tends to confirm the idea of man having 

 a preferential and more skilful hand at the earliest stage of his mastery 

 of tools and implements of war or husbandry. The prevalence of a 

 decimal system of numerals among widely severed nations, alike in 

 ancient and modern times, has been universally ascribed to the simple 

 process of counting with the aid of the fingers. Mr. Francis Galton, 

 in his Narrative of an Exploration in Tropical Africa^ when describ- 

 ing the eff'orts of the Damaras at computation, states that the mental 

 effort fails them beyond three. '' When they wish to express /owr, they 

 take to their fingers, which are to them as formidable instruments of 

 calculation as a sliding-rule is to an English school-boy. They puzzle 

 very much after fice, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure 

 the Sogers that are required for units." Turning to the line of evidence 

 which this primitive method of computation suggests, some striking 

 analogies reveal a recognition of ideas common to the savage of the 

 Polynesian archipelago and to the cultivated Greek and Eoman. 

 Donaldson, in The New Cratylus, in seeking to trace the first ten 

 numerals to their primitive roots in Sanscrit, Zend, Greek and Latin, 

 derives seven of them from the three primitive prenominal elements. 

 But five, nine and ten are referred directly to the same infantile source 

 of decimal notation, suggested by the ten fingers, as that which has 

 been recognised in similar operation among the Hawaians and New 

 Zealanders. '•'One would fancy, indeed, without any particular inves- 

 tigation of the subject, that the numb3r five would have some connec- 



