(second), (third), etc. in common lisp

so if I want to express the third element of some list I can write
(third '(a b c))
This works all the way up to (tenth).

WTF? Why would they include built in functions like this? Seems insane coming from C and Java

>>18,23
If the target is any modern machine, the best way to do it is obviously to evaluate them both at the same time.
Especially for stack machines, where crazy shit like 144-core CPUs¹ is common.

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1. http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB001-100503-GA144-1-10.pdf