MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN 225 



discovery of the famous Rosetta stone-fragment, which 

 bears portions of three identical texts written in hiero- 

 glyphics, in Greek, and in another series of symbols. 

 The Egyptian used more or less formalized characters 

 to represent certain sounds, while in addition to the 

 group of such characters combined to make a word, the 

 scribe drew a supplementary picture of the thing or 

 act signified. For instance, xeftu means enemies, but 

 the Egyptian graver added a picture of a kneeling bow- 

 man to avoid any possible misapprehension as to his 

 meaning. The symbols denoting 'Ho walk" are fol- 

 lowed by a pair of legs ; the setting sun is described 

 not only by a word but also by its outline as it lies on 

 the horizon. Here again one is struck by the simi- 

 larity between a stage in the historic development of 

 racial characteristics and a method employed at the 

 present time to teach the immature minds of children 

 that certain letters represent a particular object; in a 

 kindergarten primer the sentence ''see the rat and the 

 cat " is accompanied by pictures of the animals specified, 

 in true hieroglyphic simplicity. 



Just as the child's mind develops so that the aid of 

 the picture can be dispensed with, and the symbolic 

 characters can be used in increasingly complex ways, 

 in like manner the minds of men living in successive 

 centuries have evolved. While an evolution of human 

 conceptual processes in general is not necessarily im- 

 plied by the evolution of the forms of written language, 

 the former process is in part demonstrated by the latter 

 in so far as the change from the writing of pictures to 

 the use of conventional symbols involves an advance 

 in human ideas of the interpretation and value of the 



Q 



