Turn next to the _Sayings of the Fathers_, a treatise of Jewish ethical reflections, compiled in the first and second centuries A.D., and in the fifth chapter will be found a series of “numerical” observations. It must suffice to quote but one: _There are four types of moral character. He that saith “Mine is mine and thine is thine” is a character neither good nor bad, but some say ’tis a character wholly bad.[21] He that saith “Mine is thine and thine is mine” is a commercially minded man.[22] He that saith “Mine and thine are thine” is pious: “Mine and thine are mine,” the same is wicked._ For a last and latest example a modern saying current among the Jews and Arabs of Syria, can be cited: _There are three Voices in the World--that of running water, of the Jewish Law, and of money_. So much for the later links in the chain, but what of its beginning? Why give thoughts in stated number? Is it a writer’s trick to catch our fancy? _That_ it may be in the later, but certainly not in the early instances. There is only unconscious art in such an unsophisticated, child-like verse as the FOUR STATELY THINGS. “Child-like,” that is the word we require to describe these riddles. True; but when were the Jews and their Semitic ancestors children? Before Abraham was called, when almost the world itself was young. For a moment permit your thoughts to be drawn back a very great way, and consider the rude and inefficient life of early man. Unaided by the numberless resources, mental and material, that enrich our civilised life, dwelling in forests, caverns and rude huts of stone or earth, well-nigh defenceless against the larger animals, haunted and harried by a thousand perils real and imaginary, so man once lived and worked and thought, and by his thinking accomplished marvels. “From the moment,” writes A. R. Wallace, “when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, when fire was first used to cook his food, when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in Nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the earth’s history had had no parallel; for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe--a being who was in some degree superior to Nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind.”[23] But it was not enough that the individual should think. The secret of human success has lain in the ability to communicate ideas. Yet, to this day, with what effort we find words to body forth our thoughts and feelings! Try to conceive how difficult was the formulation and transmission of ideas in those forgotten centuries. Imagine the tribesmen gathered home for the day and seated around their fire. Here is one who has had a thought when out hunting, which would