CHAPTER I.
COUNTING.
Among the speculative questions which arise in connection with the study of arithmetic from a historical standpoint, the origin of number is one that has provoked much lively discussion, and has led to a great amount of learned research among the primitive and savage languages of the human race.

A few simple considerations will, however, show that such research must necessarily leave this question entirely unsettled, and will indicate clearly that it is, from the very nature of things, a question to which no definite and final answer can be given.
Among the barbarous tribes whose languages have been studied, even in a most cursory manner, none have ever been discovered which did not show some familiarity with the number concept.

The knowledge thus indicated has often proved to be most limited; not extending beyond the numbers 1 and 2, or 1, 2, and 3.

Examples of this poverty of number knowledge are found among the forest tribes of Brazil, the native races of Australia and elsewhere, and they are considered in some detail in the next chapter.

At first thought it seems quite inconceivable that any human being should be destitute of the power of counting beyond 2.