88 On the Origin of 
the circumstance here mentioned and insisted 
on as a strong proof that letters could never 
have been the fruit of human contrivance, is 
so far from proving this, that it is not even 
peculiar to the invention in question, and 
is found to be equally the case with a multi- 
tude of other arts, which have never been 
attributed by the wildest stretch of the most 
visionary imagination, to any other source 
than the true one, namely, the natural. vi- 
gour and ingenuity of the human understand- 
ing. 
The third argument above stated is of a 
nature extremely similar to that which we 
have just been examining, and may be refuted 
in asimilar manner. “Is it not strange,” it is 
said, ‘if letters be a human invention, that a 
“people like the Chinese, so famous for their 
‘‘ discoveries, and for the mechanical turn of 
“their genius, though they have made some 
“advances towards the expression of their 
‘ideas by arbitrary signs, should have been 
‘so completely unable to accomplish so simple 
“a contrivance?” And is it not equally 
strange, it might be replied, that two such 
enlightened nations as the Greeks and Ro- 
mans, a race of men vastly more improved in 
every respect than the Chinese ever were or 
are ever likely to be; who had made a con- 
