Treatise on Arithmetic, Practical and Theoretical

Excerpt from Treatise on Arithmetic, Practical and Theoretical
(1.) The early period of life at which we begin to acquire ideas of number, and the influence produced on our minds by becoming familiar with the language of numeration before any notions of the higher classes of number are formed, throw great difficulties in the way of any attempt to retrace the steps by which the art of counting arrived at its present high state of perfection. Under these circumstances we must naturally direct our enquiries to the state of arithmetic among people less advanced in civilisation than ourselves. But it is a remarkable fact, that while other sciences are almost unknown beyond the limits of civilisation, there is no example of a people without a system of numeration more or less extensive and perfect, with the exception of a few savage tribes, whose notions of number are singularly limited.
It is, however, apparent, that before a people could make any progress in numeration beyond a few of the smaller combinations which may be signified by the fingers, two things were indispensably necessary to be accomplished.
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