What Does Man Mean by Counting Himself?
The expression “counting himself” was originated by the first man who counted. Such a man would count all of his fingers and toes and the result would be twenty. Then, so that he would remember the number of times he had counted himself, he made a mark some place each time he reached twenty. The mark he made was a mere scratch in the dirt or on a hoe or something else. To make a scratch you merely, of course, score the surface of whatever you happen to be scratching on, and that is how it happened that the word “score” in our language to-day means as a term in counting, twenty.
There has been a great effort made to change our system of counting in tens to one where you count in twelves. That would fit in very well with our system of measuring which is based on the foot of twelve inches, and of our calendar for recording the passage of time which has twelve months. There are many arguments in favor of this change, among the principal of which is the fact that it would make our problems of division much easier, for our ten can be evenly divided by but two of our single figures, two and five, whereas twelve can be evenly divided by four of our single figures, viz., two, three, four and six. It is believed that sooner or later the system of counting by twelve instead of ten will be adopted by the entire world for counting everything. As it is now we do part of our counting by one system and part of it by another.