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Inquiries into Human Faculty
attention to a few other associations connected with them. They are often
personified by children, and characters are assigned to them, it may he on
account of the part they play in the multiplication table, or owing to some
fanciful association with their appearance or their sound. To the minds of
some persons the multiplication table appears dramatised, and any chance
group of figures may afford a plot for a tale. I have collated six full and
trustworthy accounts, and find a curious dissimilarity in the
personifications and preferences; thus the number 3 15 described as
(1)
disliked; (2) a treacherous sneak; (3) a good old friend; (4) delightful and
amusing; (5) a female companion to 2; (6) a feeble edition of 9. In one
point alone do I find any approach to unanimity, and that is in the respect
paid to 12, as in the following examples :—(1) important and influential;
(2) good and cautious—so good as to be almost noble; (3) a more
beautiful number than 10, from the many multiples that make it up—in
other words, its kindly relations to so many small numbers; (4) a great
love for 1 2, a large-hearted motherly person because of the number of
little ones that it takes, as it were, under its protection. The decimal
system seemed to me treason against this motherly 12.—All this concurs
with the importance assigned for other reasons to the number 12 in the
Number-Form.
There is no agreement as to the sex of numbers; I myself had absurdly
enough fancied that of course the even numbers would be taken to be of
the male sex, and was surprised to find that they were not. I mention this
as an example of the curious way in which our minds may be
unconsciously prejudiced by the survival of some forgotten early fancies.
I cannot find on inquiring of philologists any indications of different sexes
having been assigned in any language to different numbers.
Mr. Hershon has published an analysis of the Talmud, on the odd
principle of indexing the various passages according to the number they
may happen to contain; thus such a phrase as “there were three men who,”
etc., would be entered under the number 3. I cannot find any particular
preferences given there to especial numbers; even 7 occurs less often than
I, 2, 3, 4, and 10. Their
