Advancement of Learning 137 



necessity that cogitations be expressed by the medium of 

 words. For whatsoever is capable of sufficient differences, 

 and those perceptible by the sense, is in nature competent to 

 express cogitations. And therefore we see in the commerce 

 of barbarous people, that understand not one another s 

 language, and in the practice of divers that are dumb and 

 deaf, that men s minds are expressed in gestures, though 

 not exactly, yet to serve the turn. And we understand 

 further, that it is the use of China, and the kingdoms of the 

 high Levant, 1 to write in characters real, which express 

 neither letters nor words in gross, but things or notions; 

 insomuch as countries and provinces, which understand 

 not one another s language, can nevertheless read one 

 another s writings, because the characters are accepted 

 more generally than the languages do extend; and there 

 fore they have a vast multitude of characters, as many, I 

 suppose, as radical words. 



These notes of cogitations are of two sorts ; the one when 

 the note hath some similitude or congruity with the notion : 

 the other ad placitum, having force only by contract or 

 acceptation. Of the former sort are hieroglyphics and 

 gestures. For as to hieroglyphics, things of ancient use, 

 and embraced chiefly by the Egyptians, one of the most 

 ancient nations, they are but as continued impresses and 

 emblems. And as for gestures, they are as transitory 

 hieroglyphics, and are to hieroglyphics as words spoken are 

 written, in that they abide not; but they have evermore, 

 as well as the other, an affinity with the things signified: 

 as Periander, being consulted with how to preserve a 

 tyranny newly usurped, bid the messenger attend and 

 report what he saw him do ; and went into his garden and 

 topped all the highest flowers : signifying, that it consisted 

 in the cutting off and keeping low of the nobility and 

 grandees. 2 Ad placitum, are the characters real before 



1 &quot; In China et provinciis ultimi Orientis &quot; (De Augm.). See a 

 very interesting note on these paragraphs in Ellis and Spedding s 

 edition of the De Augm. vi. i. 



2 Aristot. Polit. iii. 13, and Herod, v. 92. Cf. also Livy, i. 54, 

 where the story is transferred to Tarquinius Superbus. Grandees, 

 in edition 1605, grandes ; the word being not yet naturalised in the 

 English language. According to Richardson, Burton (the Anatomy 

 was published in 1624) spells it grandy. In my copy of the first 

 edition I have not met with the word. 



