If we examine this word with Pictet and others, we shall find that the name of the plough comes from the Sanscrit krt, krnt, kart, to cleave or divide.  Hence krntatra, a plough or dividing instrument.  The root krt subsequently became kut or kutt, to which we must refer kuta, kutaka, the body of the plough.  This root krt, kart, is found in many European languages in the general sense of cutting or breaking, as in the old Slav word kratiti, to cut off.  It is also applied to labour and its instruments:  kartoti, to plough over again, karta, a line or furrow, and in the Vedic Sanscrit, karta, a ditch or hole.  Hence the Latin culter a saw, cultellus, a coulter, and the Sanscrit kartari, a coulter.  The Slav words for the mole which burrows in the earth are connected with the root krt, or the Slav krat.  In very remote times, men not only understood the object indicated in the word for a coulter, but they were sensible of the image of the primitive krt and its affixes, which were likewise derived from the primitive images, and with these they included the cognate images of the several derivatives from the root.  In these days the word coulter and the Sanscrit kartari are simply signs or phonetic notations, insignificant in themselves, and everything else has disappeared.  But in primitive times an image animated the word, which by the necessary faculty of perception so often described was transformed into a kind of subject which effected the action indicated by the root.  As this personality gradually faded away, the actual representation of the image was lost, and even its remote echo finally vanished, while the phonetic notation remained, devoid of life and memory, and without the recurrence of cognate images which strengthened the original idea by association.  All words undergo the like evolution, and this may be called the mythical evolution of speech.

Thus the Sanscrit word for daughter is duhitar; in Persian it is dochtar, in Greek [Greek:  Thugater], in Gothic dauhtar, in German Tochter.  The word is derived from the root duh, to milk, since this was the girl’s business in a pastoral family.  The sign still remains, but it has lost its meaning, since the image and the drama have vanished.  This analysis applies to all languages, and it may also be traced in the words for numbers.  The number five, for example, among the Aryans and in many other tongues, signifies hand.  This is the case in Thibet, in Siam, and cognate languages, in the Indian Archipelago and in the whole of Oceania, in Africa, and in many of the American peoples and tribes, where it is the origin of the decimal system.  In Homer we find the verb [Greek:  pempazein], to count in fives, and then for counting in general; in Lapland lokket, and in Finland lukea, to count, is derived from lokke, ten; and the Bambarese adang, to count, is the origin of tank, ten.