As I look upon language neither as a ready-made gift of God nor as a natural growth of the human mind, but as, in the true sense of the word, a work of human art, I must confess that nothing has surprised me so much as the high art displayed in the languages of so-called savages. I do not wish to exaggerate; and I know quite well that a great abundance of grammatical forms, such as we find in these savage dialects, is by no means a proof of high intellectual development. But if we consider how small is the number of words and ideas in the ordinary vocabulary of an English peasant,[18] and if then we find that one dialect of the Fuegians, the Tagan, consists of about 30,000 words,[19] we certainly hesitate before venturing to classify the possessors of so vast an inherited wealth as the descendants of poor savages, more savage than themselves. Such facts cannot be argued away. We cannot prevent people from despising religious concepts different from their own, or from laughing at customs which they themselves could never adopt. But such a treasure of conceptual thought as is implied in the possession of a vocabulary of 30,000 entries cannot be ignored in our estimate of the antecedents of this Fuegian race. I select the Fuegians as a crucial test simply because Darwin[20] selected them as the strongest proof of his own theory, and placed them almost below the level reached by the most intelligent animals. I have always had a true regard for Darwin, and what I admired in him more than anything else was his fearlessness, his simple devotion to truth. I believe that if he had seen that his own theories were wrong, he would have been the first to declare it, whatever his followers might have said. But in spite of all that, no man can resist the influence of his own convictions. When Darwin looked at the Fuegians, he no doubt saw what he tells us, but then he saw it with Darwinian eyes. According to his account, the party of Fuegians whom he saw resembled the devils which come on the stage in such plays as _Der Freischütz_.[21] “Viewing such men, one can hardly believe,” he says, “that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world” (p. 235). “Their language, according to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.”