Connected with the origin of each number word there may be some metaphor, which cannot always be distinctly traced; and where the metaphor was born of the hand or of the foot, we inevitably associate it with the practice of finger counting.

But races as fond of metaphor and of linguistic embellishment as are those of the East, or as are our American Indians even, might readily resort to some other source than that furnished by the members of the human body, when in want of a term with which to describe the 5, 10, or any other number of the numeral scale they were unconsciously forming.

That the first numbers of a numeral scale are usually derived from other sources, we have some reason to believe; but that all above 2, 3, or at most 4, are almost universally of digital origin we must admit.

Exception should properly be made of higher units, say 1000 or anything greater, which could not be expected to conform to any law of derivation governing the first few units of a system.
Collecting together and comparing with one another the great mass of terms by which we find any number expressed in different languages, and, while admitting the great diversity of method practised by different tribes, we observe certain resemblances which were not at first supposed to exist.

The various meanings of 1, where they can be traced at all, cluster into a little group of significations with which at last we come to associate the idea of unity.