abounding in signs by analogy, or symbols; whereas the Chinese, who set out like the Peruvians with a knotted cord*, and were less inventive, and without a secret worship, cultivated that species which most abounds in marks of arbitrary institution †. In a word, all the barbarous nations upon earth, before the invention or introduction of letters, made use of Hieroglyphics, or signs for things, to record their meaning: the more gross, by representation; the more subtile and civilized, by analogy and institution. THUS we have brought down the general history of Writing, by a gradual and easy descent, from a PICTURE to a LETTER; for Chinese marks which participate of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the one hand, and of alphabetic letters on the other (just as those hieroglyphics partook equally of Mexican pictures and Chinese characters) are on the very border of letters; an ALPHABET invented to express sounds instead of things being only a compendium of that large volume of arbitrary marks. Some alphabets, as the Ethiopic and Coptic ‡, have taken in hieroglyphic figures to compose their letters; which appears both from their shapes and names. The ancient Egyptian did the same, as a learned French Writer hath shewn in a very ingenious and convincing manner. But this is seen even from the names which express letters and literary-writing in the ancient languages: thus the Greek words EHMEIA and EHMATA signify as well the images of natural things as artificial marks or characters; and гPAN is both to paint and to write. The not attending to this natural and easy progress of hieroglyphic images from pictures to alphabetic letters, made some amongst the ancients, as Plato and Tully, when struck with the wonderful artifice of an Les premiers inventeurs de l'écriture Chinoise, en s'attachant à des signes, qui n'ont qu'un rapport d'institution avec les choses signifiées, ont suivi le génie de la nation Chinoise; qui même avant Fo-hi, c'est à dire, dans la plus profonde antiquité, se servoit de cordelettes nouées en guise d'écriture. Mem. de l'Acad. tom. vi. Freiet. + See note [S] at the end of this Book. See note [T] at the end of this Book. See note [U] at the end of this Book. |