Savages have few general ideas of any kind, as is evidenced by the almost total absence among them of words denoting general ideas. Many savage races cannot comprehend numbers greater than five or six, and are unable to make the simplest mathematical computations without using the fingers. The languages of savages are extremely rude, words being freely pieced out with pantomime. Savages talk with difficulty in the dark, because of their great reliance on gesture in conversation. The rich vocabularies of the languages of Europe and America have grown up step by step with the evolution of European and American mind. Every language is an evolution. The languages of many primitive peoples lack the verb to be entirely, and all nouns are proper nouns. Words are often little more than grunts or clucks, and are without the euphony and articulation found in the languages of the civilised. Darwin says that the language of the Fuegians sounds like a man clearing his throat. Not only every language, but every word, both in its form and meaning, is in process of evolution. _Spirit_, for instance, originally meant ‘blowing,’ _understanding_ meant ‘getting beneath,’ and _development_ the physical act of ‘unfolding.’ Words are continually drifting from their original meanings under the stress of incessant use, as ships drag their anchors in a gale. Those words that are exposed to common use undergo the most rapid changes, while words sheltered from the rush of human affairs, like harboured ships, hold to their moorings forever. _Let_, for instance, once meant ‘hinder’; now it means ‘allow.’ _Bisect_, on the other hand, a word of rare and technical use, has remained unaltered in significance for twenty centuries. Even our alphabet has been evolved. The twenty-six symbols composing it have been eroded into the peculiar forms in which they appear at present by the various peoples through whose hands they have come to us. The originals were pictographs such as are still found on the aged monuments of earth’s earliest civilisations. The English got their alphabet from the Romans, who obtained it, along with almost everything else they had, from the Greeks. The Greeks received it from the Phenicians, and the Phenicians from the papyrus writers of Egypt, who in turn procured it from those hieroglyph chiselers who carved their curious literature on the granite tombs of the Nile in the remotest dawn of human history. _A_, the first letter of our alphabet, is a figure which has been evolved, as the result of long wear and tear, from the picture of an eagle; _B_ was originally the picture of a crane; _C_ represents a throne; _D_ a hand; _F_ an asp; _H_ a sieve; _K_ a bowl; _L_ a lioness; _M_ an owl; _N_ a water-line; _R_ a mouth; _S_ a garden; _T_ a lasso; _X_ a chairback; and _Z_ a duck.