When he says _five_, he uses, in many cases at least, the same word that serves him when he wishes to say _hand_; and his mental concept when he says _five_ is of a hand.

The concrete idea of a closed fist or an open hand with outstretched fingers, is what is upper-most in his mind.

He knows no more and cares no more about the pure number 5 than he does about the law of the conservation of energy.
He sees in his mental picture only the real, material image, and his only comprehension of the number is, "these objects are as many as the fingers on my hand." Then, in the lapse of the long interval of centuries which intervene between lowest barbarism and highest civilization, the abstract and the concrete become slowly dissociated, the one from the other.

First the actual hand picture fades away, and the number is recognized without the original assistance furnished by the derivation of the word.

But the number is still for a long time a certain number _of objects_, and not an independent concept.