work to test her educational proficiency—you will remember how the White Queen says (in order to discover whether Alice can do addition) "What's one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one?"
"I don't know," says Alice, "I lost count."
"She can't do addition," says the White Queen.
Well—she "lost count," and, therefore, that series of ones failed to have any fresh meaning or association for her.
In the same way the primitive savage loses count; beyond three, numbers are too many for him—they become merely a "lot." But war and the chase begin to teach him the relative value of numbers; and he finds out that if one lot goes out to fight a bigger lot, the smaller lot probably gets beaten; so that, before long, calculation of some sort becomes necessary for the preservation of existence. He finds out also (and this is where ornament begins to come in) that a certain amount of wilful miscalculation has a beauty and a value of its own. So, after going out to fight ten against ten, and defeating them, he comes back and says to his wives and the surrounding communities by whom he wishes to be held in awe—"My lot killed bigger lot—much, much bigger lot." And so, when he comes later on to set down his wilful miscalculations in records of scripture, he provides delightful problems for the Bishop Colensos of future ages—problems the undoing of which may
