Similarly, the number of colours in a certain hide being five, the name for that hide was adopted as their next numeral.

At this point they began to resort to digital numeration also; and any higher number is expressed by that method.
In the sense in which the word is defined by mathematicians, _number_ is a pure, abstract concept.

But a moment's reflection will show that, as it originates among savage races, number is, and from the limitations of their intellect must be, entirely concrete.

An abstract conception is something quite foreign to the essentially primitive mind, as missionaries and explorers have found to their chagrin.

The savage can form no mental concept of what civilized man means by such a word as "soul"; nor would his idea of the abstract number 5 be much clearer.