1820.] Invention of Alphabetic Writing. 369 



tion from heaven. And when we consider the prodigious saga- 

 city, the wonderful powers of discrimination, the profundity of 

 thought, and the ahuost infinite comprehension requisite to 

 analyze words into their component parts — sounds appearing 

 simple, into sounds still more simple — to discover that the mul- 

 titude of words in a language are composed of a very small 

 number of sounds — to ascertain precisely this small number, 

 and to annex a mark to each, we shall not be astonished that 

 the eminent men to whom I have alluded, should deem the 

 human mind incapable of such an effort, and esteem it necessary 

 to cut the knot by a miraculous intervention of the Deity. 



Hartley conjectures that the communication was first made to 

 Moses on the delivery, at Mount Sinai, of the two tables which 

 the sacred historian declares to have been written by the finger 

 of God ; * and Wakefield (who, still less than Hartley, can be 

 suspected of weakness or creduhty) supports a similar opinion 

 by very convincing arguments,+ without adverting, however, to 

 the particular occasion on which the revelation was made to the 

 Hebrews, or even referring to the discussion of Hartley on the 

 subject. But so great are the achievements, so extensive the 

 dominion attempted and attained by the mind of man, that lam 

 more inclined to solve the difficulty in a natural way by ascrib- 

 ing the discovery to those exertions which have hitherto found 

 a specific for every want, as soon as the want was felt, rather 

 than assume, without manifest necessity, a departure from the 

 course of nature, and those laws by which Providence visibly 

 governs the world. 



It may be said that when alphabetic writing was first adopted, 

 there was not such a want of the means of recording events, 

 opinions, and laws, as would spur the human mind to the exer- 

 tions requisite to this great discovery. Mankind must have 

 been in possession of picture writing, hieroglyphics, or that 

 improvement upon them which exists at present among the 

 Chinese, and these were sufficient for all their purposes. They 

 are, it is true, greatly inferior to the alphabetic mode of writing; 

 but as the former could never improve into the latter, as they 

 are each perfectly distinct and unconnected in their kinds, as 

 one represents things and ideas, and the other neither things 

 nor ideas in the first instance, but sounds, how could the former 

 mode be abandoned, and the latter adopted, when the one 

 though inconvenient seemed fitted to all the wants of the writer; 

 and the other was not only untried, but was even of such a nature, 

 as that no sagacity could conjecture its utility until subjected to 

 reiterated trial ? 



It has been ascertained that the nations bordering on China, 

 and which speak a different language, can read and understand 

 the Chinese when written, though they cannot comprehend a 



• Hartley on Man, ls». v. 308, 8vo. edition. 

 tSecond Appendix t» (iilbert WakeBeld's Life. 



