Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/739

 67O AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899

Accordingly, it seems safe provisionally to trace the origin of the number concepts in the light of common attributes of animals and men, and especially in the strong light afforded by the late- studied workings of primitive minds ; and the lines seem clearly to define a crude philosophy whence all almacabalic and mathe- matical systems have necessarily sprung.

��The character of almacabala, and the strength of its hold on the human mind, are illustrated by numberless vestiges, mainly mystical numbers and cognate graphic symbols. The entire series of mystical numbers may readily be ascertained by juxta- posing the three almacabalic number-systems and the products of their augmentation under the almacabalic rule. They are as follows (the super-mystical numbers accentuated) :

2-3- 3, S» 7» 9» etc.

4-5- Si 9i *3» 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41. 45. 49» 53. 57. 61, 65, 69, 73, etc

6-7- 7 x 3i 19. 25, 31, 37. 43. 49i 55, 6x, 67, 73, etc.

The vestigial uses of the binary-ternary system are innumer- able. Two persists as the basis of the semi-mystical Aristotelian classification, which still exerts strong influence on Aryan thought ; two is the basis, also, of the largely-mystical Chinese philosophy in which the complementary cosmologic elements, Yang and Yin, are developed into the Book of Changes 1 ; and it finds expression, either alone or in its normal union, in most Aryan cults. The mystical three pervades nine-tenths of modern literature and all modern folklore; it finds classic expression in the Graces and the Fates ; it is particularly strong in Germanic and Celtic literature, cropping out in the conventional Three Wishes and Three Tests (a survival of the ordeal), and also as a customary charm number ; and in these or related ways it persists in half the families and most of the child-groups even of this country and of today. The concept survives, also, in all manner

1 Chinese Philosophy \ by Paul Cams, 1898, p. 3 et seq.

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