MATERIALS TSED TO WHITE UPON BEFORE THE 

 INVENTION OF PRINTING." 



I'.y Ai.MKErr Mairk. 



Lihniriiiii of I he I'liircrsif ii of I'liiis. 



The subject treated here is not new; it is to be found, iudeed, in 

 many works, or scattered in special reviews, in nionograi^hs, and notes 

 upon the history of writing and upon the methods and materials used 

 for that purpose. Put a synthetic presentation of this knowledge in 

 a definitive form lias thus far not been attempted. It is at once 

 curious and instructixc; connected, on tlie one hand, with the history 

 of the evolution of languages and of writing, and, on the other, with 

 a portion of human industry. It is, in a word, a contribution to the 

 sociological history of mankind. 



The patient research of linguists and the comparatixe study of the 

 most ancient styles of writing ha\e led to the enunciation of the idea 

 that certain signs or rudimentai'v drawings of a kind still used 

 by the uncivilized of our day were employed at the very origin of 

 writing — pictographies writing. 



First let us hav(> a definition of writing; the one Monsieui- Philippe 

 Berger gives: '•'• It is the art of fixing the word by convemional signs, 

 traced by the hand, which ai'e termed characters. Characters may 

 represent ideas or soumls. We term ideographic writing such as is 

 used to give us tlie ideas directly; })honetic writing, such as expresses 

 by characters the sounds of the word. Writing diH'ei's from design 

 in that it is inseparable from language. If, in ideographic writing, 

 the characters are ])ictures of certain ideas or cei'taiu objects, they 

 are recalled to the mind under (he form which (hey assume in speech; 

 that is to say, through the medium of the word. All systems of 

 writing which wei-e in (he beginning purely ideogra|)hic became, by 

 degrees, syllabic. The distinction between alphabetic and non- 

 alphabetic writing is the only one which corresponds with historic 

 reality." '^ 



n Translated, by iicniiissioii, li-oni Ilcvue Scientifiiiue, Paris. August 1.3-20, 1904. 

 & Ilistoire de Tm-iture dans lantiijuitt', I'arLs, 1S!)1. Introduct.. pp. XIII, XV. 



689 



