HIEROGLYPHICS. 



727 



himself by visible signs have reached the stage above- 

 mentioned. An eye with a sceptre, beneath, would not 

 be understood so easily to signify a king at present, 

 as it was by the Egyptians. Symbolical hierogly- 

 phics must immediately produce conventional : they 

 are, indeed, conventional themselves, as the symbol 

 chosen is not the only one by which the same idea 

 might have been expressed ; and, besides, a sign 

 which is symbolical for one generation, may be mere- 

 ly conventional for the next. Besides, the more 

 men have to write, the less time can they bestow on 

 their writing, and in the same proportion as the sym- 

 bol gradually expresses more and more the general 

 idea, the sign itself becomes less and less similar to 

 the original symbol, until at last it is no longer to be 

 recognised as the picture of an object, but takes the 

 character of a mere conventional sign. This is the 

 case with most of the signs of the Chinese writing, 

 which no one could recognise as pictures of the ob- 

 jects for which they were originally intended. 



We have thus traced writing to the stage in which 

 signs representing the object itself, symbols designat- 

 ing the object by association of ideas, and conven- 

 tional or arbitrary characters, are used together. Of 

 this manner of writing we still find instances among 

 the most civilized nations. The Germans use a f, 

 in works where the saving of space is important, for 

 the word died. This is an instance of symbolical 

 hieroglyphics, the cross indicating death, either 

 because it was generally planted upon graves, or 

 because it called to mind the death of Him, whose 

 death is most important. In the same way, they 

 write Q ?., for square miles. This is a figurative 

 hieroglyphic. The Atlas of Las Cases (Le Sage) is 

 full of symbolical, figurative, and conventional, or, as 

 they should rather be called, arbitrary hieroglyphics. 

 In what way the human mind made the next great 

 step of designating the grammatical forms, for in- 

 stance, by adding to a hieroglyphic the feminine or 

 plural sign (or, as we should call it the termination), 

 we shall treat of more fully in the article JVrit- 

 ing. 



After the human mind has reached the point 

 above-mentioned in the formation of signs, it has 

 two ways of farther progress. It may either gene- 

 ralize the sign, or generalize the thing signified by 

 the sign. The first mode was adopted oy the Egyp- 

 tians. Thus the sign of an eagle, which, in the 

 Coptic, that is, the Egyptian language, was called 

 ahom, was used by the Egyptians for the sound A in 

 general. The other direction was taken by the 

 Chinese, who founded their art of writing on the 

 analogy of ideas. Thus, for instance, all the words 

 which express manual labour or occupation, are 

 composed, in their written language of the character 

 which represents the word hand, with some other, 

 expressive of the particular occupation intended to 

 be designated, or of the material employed. 



Plato tells us that Thoth, secretary to the Egyptian 

 king Thamus, invented the alphabet, and Champol- 

 lion has actually discovered tliat the Egyptians had a 

 kind of hieroglyphic writing, which was merely phone- 

 tic, that is, was composed of a series of signs not having 

 reference to the objects represented, but merely to 

 the sounds of the words expressed. Thus the figura- 

 tive signs passed over into mere phonetic characters. 

 This was not only the case in Egyptian writing : the 

 names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet lead us 

 to suppose a similar transformation. We quote the 

 following passage from a note of professor Moses 

 Stuart to his son's translation of J. G. H. Greppo's 

 Essay on the Hieroglyphic System of M. Champol- 

 lion, Jr. " One need only to read the interpretation 

 of the names of the Hebrew alphabet successively, 

 in order to believe that, originally, there was some 



analogy between the shape of the respective letters, 

 and the objects by whose names they are called. 

 For example, beginning with the alphabet, we pro- 

 ceed thus : ox, house, camel, hollow, hook, armour, 

 travelling- scrip, serpent, hand, hollow-hand, ox-goad, 

 water, fish, prop, eye, mouth, screech-locust, ear, 

 head, tooth, cross. These make out the whole ori- 

 ginal alphabet of the Hebrews ; and no one can well 

 suppose that these names rather than others were 

 given to the letters, except on account of some 

 resemblance between them and the objects whicli 

 bore these names. That the resemblances to these 

 respective objects are not found in the present 

 Hebrew alphabet, is no argument against the posi- 

 tion ; for all critics are agreed that the ancient 

 Hebrew letters have exchanged their forms for those 

 of a later alphabet," &c. So far professor Stuart. 



Before we give the system of Egyptian hierogly- 

 phics, according to Champollion's ingenious dis- 

 coveries, one remark may be allowed to us. In a 

 certain sense of the word, the course which the 

 Chinese have taken may be considered more philo- 

 sophical than that of the invention ascribed to Thoth, 

 the former being founded on the combination of 

 ideas, and the latter on the mere external sounds ; 

 and yet the latter system has become, at least in 

 our view of the matter (a Chinese, of course, would 

 differ from us), much the more important. By about 

 forty signs we are able to express almost every 

 sound, and, through them, every idea in its various 

 shades (and, with most languages, from twenty-three 

 to twenty-seven signs are sufficient), whilst the 

 Chinese have 10,000 characters in common use. 

 Our system has become much the most abstract, 

 and with this the Chinese reproach it, when they 

 say, " That which enters the mind of a European 

 enters through the ear" (meaning that our letters 

 represent sounds), " while what enters the mind of a 

 Chinese enters through the eye" (meaning that their 

 signs designate immediately ideas) ; and the learned 

 Remusat mentions the lively effect of the Chinese 

 picture-writing, in comparison to that of our con- 

 ventional signs. We can easily believe him. Sup- 

 pose the Chinese to designate the word tyrant by a 

 sign which their well executed writing should show 

 to be derived from a tiger. But the difference, in 

 common cases, is not probably so great as at first 

 appears. In general, if we read a book, the signs 

 do not suggest to us the sounds which they repre- 

 sent, and then the ideas (though this is the case with 

 children and illiterate people, who are accustomed 

 to read loud, or, at least, moving the lips, a proof 

 that, to them, the characters actually represent the 

 sounds), but, from habit, the word suggests an idea. 

 If we read, for instance, a word like loveliness, the 

 idea which it represents is not produced within us 

 by the slow process that the characters for love 

 remind us of the sound love, and then of the idea, 

 next li of lovely, and, at last, ness of the sound, and 

 the general meaning of this syllable, and then, the 

 whole word of the sound loveliness, and the idea 

 which this sound is intended to convey ; but the 

 whole word presents itself as one sign to the eye, 

 and suggests, at once, the idea of loveliness. Is'ow, 

 generally speaking, there is probably the same pro- 

 cess in the mind of a Chinese in common cases. He 

 sees the sign, and it produces, at once, the idea. We 

 may remark, too, as an advantage of our mode of 

 writing, that the etymology of a word frequently has 

 a wonderful effect on us, particularly in original 

 languages, as Greek or German, and, to a certain 

 extent, in derivative languages, as Italian and Eng- 

 lish. With these reservations, we may allow, tha t, 

 in certain cases, the Chinese writing may have a 

 much superior effect upon the mind, by presenting a 



