p. 12 | Are Twice Two Four?

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 1, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 25.

Are Twice Two Four?

Frank Galton somewhere tells an amusing story, since profusely copied by all the anthropologists, of how, during his South African wanderings, he once wanted to buy a couple of sheep from an unsophisticated heathen Damara. Current coin in that part of the world is usually represented, it seems, by cakes of tobacco, and two cakes were the recognized market price of a sheep in Damara land at the time of Mr. Galton's memorable visit. So the unsuspecting purchaser chose a couple of wethers from the flock, and, naturally enough, laid down four pieces of tobacco to pay for them before the observant face of the astonished vender.

The Damara eyed the proffered price with suspicious curiosity. What could be the meaning of this singular precipitancy? He carefully took up two pieces and placed them in front of one of the sheep; then he took up the other two pieces with much wonder and placed them in front of the other. There must be magic in it! The sum actually came out even. The Damara, for his part, didn't like the look of it. This thing was evidently uncanny. How could the supernaturally clever white man tell beforehand that two and two made four?

He felt about it, no doubt, as we ourselves should feel if a great mathematician were suddenly to calculate out for us a priori what we were going to have to-day for dinner, and how much exactly we owed the butcher. After gazing at the pat and delusive symmetry of the two sheep and the four cakes of tobacco for a brief breathing space, the puzzled savage, overpowered but not convinced, pushed away the cakes with a gesture of alarm, took back his sheep to the bosom of his flock, and began the whole transaction over again de capo. He wasn't going to be cheated out of his two sound wethers by a theoretical white man who managed bargains for live sheep on such strictly abstract mathematical principles.—Sel.