Hence the actual origin of number may safely be excluded from the limits of investigation, and, for the present, be left in the field of pure speculation.
A most inviting field for research is, however, furnished by the primitive methods of counting and of giving visible expression to the idea of number.
Our starting-point must, of course, be the sign language, which always precedes intelligible speech; and which is so convenient and so expressive a method of communication that the human family, even in its most highly developed branches, never wholly lays it aside.

It may, indeed, be stated as a universal law, that some practical method of numeration has, in the childhood of every nation or tribe, preceded the formation of numeral words.
Practical methods of numeration are many in number and diverse in kind.

But the one primitive method of counting which seems to have been almost universal throughout all time is the finger method.

It is a matter of common experience and observation that every child, when he begins to count, turns instinctively to his fingers; and, with these convenient aids as counters, tallies off the little number he has in mind.

This method is at once so natural and obvious that there can be no doubt that it has always been employed by savage tribes, since the first appearance of the human race in remote antiquity.