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114 CHAPTER IV.

A MARTIAN INSTRUCTOR.

EXT morning I commenced my study of the Martian language. The picturewriting was not difficult, for the symbols were the same in principle as ours, founded, indeed, on the bases of geometry, or natural symbolism, such as must be almost universal. The circle meant space, the point meant unity, the multiplication of points meant numbers, the equal lines meant equality, the crossed lines meant addition, the picture of the thing meant the thing depicted. It was the same symbolism as was the basis of human writing in the Egyptian hieroglyphic or the ancient Chinese, a small part of which still lingers with you in mathematical and masonic symbols. It was the language, not of a particular world, but of the universe; still it had local symbols for ideas belonging to that Martian world. These I had to learn, but my instructor soon put me in the