1863.] ]^15 [Chase: 



except tbe few which he introduces to illustrate his memoir. By 

 means of the few conjectural letters that he has given, a number of 

 words may easily be found that tend to corroborate his views, and 

 although the evidence that they give is by no means conclusive, it 

 is sufficiently curious and interesting to tempt one to farther investi- 

 gation* 



n. The Chinese writing contains all the elements of the alphabetic 

 letters, — the horizontal line, the perpendicular, the oblique, the 

 hook, the curve, the point, — and to each of these efements it attaches 

 a special meaning. The same reason that leads us to infer the an- 

 tiquity of an alphabet, from the fact that each of its letters retains a 

 certain significance, would, a fortiori, indicate the still greater 

 antiquity of a system that retains a meaning not only for every letter, 

 but for every element of each letter. 



0. Through the study of the Chinese hieroglyphs, the number of 

 radicals may be greatly reduced, and an alphabet might perhaps be 

 compiled, uo more extensive than our own, from which all the char- 

 acters of the language could be formed by combination, according to 

 simple rules. The whole number of primitive hieroglyphs does not 

 probably exceed eighty,t and many of these are found only in a few 

 words. At least two-thirds of the words that are given in the Dic- 

 tionaries of De Guigues and Morrison, appear to be made up of about 

 twenty primitives. 



p. It is reasonable to suppose that the earliest efforts at speech 

 would be accompanied by expressive gestures, and that the earliest 

 writing would employ images suggested by these natural gestures. 

 We accordingly find, in all known systems of picture writing, that 

 different portions of the human body occupy a prominent position. 

 And all the organs which have names corresponding to those of the 

 Hebrew letters, — the hand, hollow hand, eye, mouth, ear, head, 



* Sir William Jones (Asiatic Researches, Vol. II, p. 373), says: "As to the 

 fancy of M. de Guignes, that the complicated symbols of China were at first no 

 more than Phenician monograms, let us hope that he has abandoned so wild a 

 conceit, which he started probably with no other view than to display his inge- 

 nuity and learning." This criticism, flippant as it seems in view of the distin- 

 guished scholarship of the French savant, is perhaps justifiable, but the curious 

 coincidences that M. de Guignes has pointed out, especially those between the 

 names of the early Chinese and Egyptian kings, are such as to render it still an 

 open question, not whether all the Chinese symbols were Phenician monograms 

 (which no one probably ever imagined), but whether any of them may have been 

 originally formed after the manner of the Egyptian cartouches. 



t All the most important ones are given in PI. I, figs. 19 to 90. 



