82 TRAXSACTIOXS OF THE [DEC. 7, 



factory reason or proof. They merit our thanks only so far as 

 tliey were the conservers of what they themselves received. 



The history of onr alphabet is the history of civilization. With 

 the introduction of letters and the means of fixing words on stone, 

 paper, or learher, there began a more rapid develo])ment of the 

 faculties of man, and the consequent changes in the home and 

 the state. As every invention, though excellent and perfect at 

 first sight, admits of improvement, so was tliis the case with our 

 written language. When looking at the definite form of our 

 present letters, Ave should see in them the result of a gradual devel- 

 opment, the product of many changes. The first act of a man in 

 the morning and the last in the evening is to sec, to see a picture. 

 It is, therefore, not strange that the first endeavors of man to 

 convey a thought to another should be by the use of a picture. 

 Such was the primitive writing of onr "Indians, the Mexicans, 

 Chinese, Assyrians, and Egyptians. It is only a picture that we 

 now see in our letters, but that ])icture represents a sound. The 

 first inventors of our letters could have had no pictures at their 

 disjiosal, beyond what they really saw in nature; therefore, the 

 first means of conveying thongiit in writing must have been pic- 

 tures of natural objects. Tradition corroborates this statement; 

 and however little tradition may be used in any scientific research, 

 yet it helps greatly when it is not made the basis of investigation. 

 This tradition is given in the names of the Hebrew letters, for 

 instance, A or Aleph is "ox" ; B orBetliis "house" ; G ( = ourC) 

 or Gimel is " camel" ; all of which refer the letter back to a pic- 

 ture. It would, however, be totally misleading to adopt the 

 other part of this tradition, that the letters must originally have 

 had the forms of the objects after which they were named; that 

 is, that because A is "an ox," N "a fish," P "a mouth, ^' S "a 

 tooth," the letters A, N, P, and S must have been at first ex- 

 pressed by the pictures of an ox, fisli, mouth, and tooth. The 

 adoption of this tradition has, until quite recently, proved the 

 stumbling-ljlock of all our dictionaries and encyclopaedias. By 

 accepting this, Ave would not be able to advance one step furth.er 

 in our investigation, as no such original pictures have ever 

 been found. 



It is a strange coincidence that the Avords expressing the act of 

 "making letters" denote, in the firstplace, "to scrape or dig, to 

 chi.-el or draAV in outline." Thus tiie Latin scriho, the Greek 

 ypdqjro {gi-apho), the IlebrcAv "^CD (•^'''(A'^')' ^^^^ Egyptian diet, 

 all of Avhich mean to write, have for their primary meaning "to 

 sci'aj)e." Our English " to Avrite" has the same primary mean- 

 ing, coming from the Anglo-Saxon ivritan. In the Eunes of 

 our forefathers, Ave find the Avord rita (" to write") interclianges 

 with rista (the modern German ritzen), " to scrape or scratch," 



