One of man’s first efforts at the orderly arrangement of things is numbering them, counting; and numeral words must have been among the earliest that were formed, and among those which, being most constantly used, would be most tenaciously preserved. So it proved. Most of the numeral words, _one_, _two_, _three_, etc., in all the Indo-European languages are found to be identical in origin, and some of them essentially so in form. For clearness and brevity of illustration let us take English _two_, which in Dutch is _twe_, Icelandic (in the objective) _tvo_, Danish _to_, Swedish _tva_, Mæso-Gothic _twai_, German _zwei_, Gælic _da_, Welsh _dau_, Russian _dva_, Latin _duo_, French _deux_, Italian _due_, Greek _duo_, Sanskrit _dra_:—so English _three_ is in Dutch _trie_, Danish and Swedish _tre_, Icelandic _thrir_, in the Celtic tongues _tri_, in Russian _tri_, Mæso-Gothic _threis_, German _drei_, Latin _tres_, Greek _treis_, Sanskrit _tri_. It is unnecessary to continue the illustration of this point. Other numeral words are equally remarkable in their continuity; and all are traceable to a remote antiquity and through a wide dispersion.
One more pronoun may well be examined. The first thought of the human mind, as we have already seen, on the perception of something else than its own body is “me” and “not me:” a dual thought, both elements of which come into consciousness together:—this that I feel or see is not me. The second perception is of what we call the second person, for which the word in English until recently was, and among some English-speaking people still is, _thou_. This word, which supplies one of the commonest needs of life in language among people of all conditions, has been preserved among all the Aryan peoples for four thousand years almost without the signs of phonetic wear and tear. In Old Frisian (the language which, next to the so-called Anglo-Saxon, is nearest of kin to English) it is _thu_, in Dutch (which of spoken languages is next nearest) it has strangely disappeared, but in Icelandic it is _thu_, Danish and Swedish _du_, in Mæso-Gothic _thu_, in German _du_, in the Celtic tongues _tu_, in Russian _tui_, Latin, Italian and French _tu_, Greek _su_ (for _tu_), Persian _tu_, Sanskrit _tuam_.