ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 249 



but things and notions; insomuch, that numerous nations, 

 though of quite different languages, yet, agreeing in the 

 use of these characters, hold correspondence by writing. 5 

 And thus a book written in such characters may be read 

 and interpreted by each nation in its own respective lan 

 guage. 



The signs of things significative without the help or 

 interposition of words are therefore of two kinds, the one 

 congruous, the one arbitrary. Of the first kind, are hiero 

 glyphics and gestures; of the second, real characters. The 

 use of hieroglyphics is of great antiquity, being held in 

 veneration, especially among that most ancient nation, the 

 Egyptians, insomuch that this seems to have been an early 

 kind of writing, prior to the invention of letters, unless, 

 perhaps, among the Jews. 6 And gestures are a kind of 

 transitory hieroglyphics; for as words are fleeting in the 

 pronunciation, but permanent when written down, so hiero 

 glyphics, expressed by gesture, are momentary; but when 

 painted, durable. When Periander, being consulted how 

 to preserve a tyranny newly usurped, bid the messenger re 

 port what he saw; and going into the garden, cropped all 

 the tallest flowers; 7 he thus used as strong a hieroglyphic 

 as if he had drawn it upon paper. 



Again, it is plain that hieroglyphics and gestures have 



twenty-five letters, while the Chinese letters are as innumerable as our words ; 

 and what makes the distinction perhaps more startling, there never has been 

 an attempt on the part of that nation to analyze this infinite series of words, or 

 to reduce them to the common elements of vocal sounds. Through this want 

 of philosophic analysis, which characterizes nearly all the Asiatic tribes, the 

 Chinese may be said never perfectly to understand their own language. Ed. 



5 See Spizelius &quot;De Ee Literaria Chinensium,&quot; ed. Lugd. Bat. 1660; &quot;Webb s 

 &quot;Historical Essay upon the Chinese Language,&quot; printed at London, 1669; 

 Father Besnier s &quot;Reunion des Langues&quot;; Father le Compe, and other of the 

 Missionaries Letters. Ed. 



6 See Causinus s &quot;Polyhistor. Symbolicus,&quot; and &quot;Symbolica ^Egyptiorum 

 Sapientia,&quot; ed. Par. 1618. And for other writers upon this subject, see Mor- 

 hof s &quot;Polyhistor.,&quot; torn. i. lib. iv. cap. 2, de Yariis Scriptures Modis. Ed. 



7 Arist. Polit. iii. 13. The person who sent to consult Periander was Thra- 

 sybulus of Miletus. Herodotus (v. 92) gives the opposite version of the story, 

 making Periander consult Thrasybulus. Compare the story of Tarquin, told 

 by Ovid, Fast. ii. 701. 



