248 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



the organ; 2, the method; and 3, the illustration or orna 

 ment of speech and discourse. 



The vulgar doctrine of the organ of speech called gram 

 mar is of two kinds, the one having relation to speaking, 

 the other to writing. For, as Aristotle well observed, words 

 are the marks of thoughts, and letters of words; and we 

 refer both of these to grammar. 3 But before we proceed to 

 its several parts, it is necessary to say something in general 

 of the organ of this traditive doctrine, because it seems to 

 have more descendants besides words and letters. And 

 here we observe, that whatever may be split into differ 

 ences, sufficiently numerous for explaining the variety of 

 notions, provided these differences are sensible, may be 

 a means of conveying the thoughts from man to man ; for 

 we find that nations of different languages hold a commerce, 

 in some tolerable degree, by gestures. And from the prac 

 tice of some persons born deaf and dumb, but otherwise 

 ingenious, we see conversation may be held between them 

 and such of their friends as have learned their gestures. 

 And it is now well known, that in China and the more 

 eastern provinces, they use at this day certain real, not 

 nominal, characters, 4 to express, not their letters or words, 



3 Interpret, i. 2. 



4 The original is, &quot;nee literas nee verba,&quot; which in Latin signify oral as 

 well as written language ; so that, to avoid equivocation, we should annex the 

 two adjectives, sonorous and written, to fix their signification. With regard to 

 the relation which exists between the oral and written speech of the Chinese, 

 it is, as the text would imply, not different from that which prevails among us. 

 In articulating, we pronounce as the Chinese the sonorous signs which corre 

 spond to the written words, and their art of reading, no less than ours, consists 

 in the struggle to transplant this correspondence in our minds, and learn its 

 reciprocal relations. Even allowing that the Chinese, in addition to their vulgar 

 tongue, had adopted hieroglyphical writing, so designed as to convey, without 

 the interposition of oral signs, the exact ideas which they represent, yet each of 

 these signs would invariably awaken the idea which represented it in the oral 

 language, as well as the vocal word refer to the idea indicated by the written 

 hieroglyphic. The only persons who appear not to intrude intermediate signs 

 between the hieroglyphic and the idea which it conveys to the mind, are those 

 who are incapacitated by nature. But in this respect there is no resemblance 

 between the deaf and dumb and our Asiatic contemporaries. 



Bacon therefore has not seized the exact distinction between the Chinese 

 writing and our own, which consists not in dispensing with vocal signs, but in 

 the diversified elements of which it is composed. Our language contains only 



