182 THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



is, for extra meaning or extra emphasis. Then to 

 save time the objects were drawn in shorthand — a 

 couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in 

 the Chinese for man ; a square in the same language 

 for a field ; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting 

 the roof, for a house. To express further qualities, 

 these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in 

 ingenious ways. A man and a field together conveyed 

 the idea of wealth, and because a man with a field was 

 rich, he was supposed to be happy, and the same com- 

 bination stood, and stands to this day, for content- 

 ment. When a roof is drawn and a woman beneath 

 it — or the strokes which represent a roof and a woman 

 — we have the idea of a woman at home, a woman at 

 peace, and hence the symbol comes to stand for quiet- 

 ness and rest. Chinese writing is picture-writing, 

 with the pictures degenerated into dashes — a lingual 

 form of the modern impressionism. 



When writing was fully evolved, this height was 

 only the starting-point for some new development. 

 Every summit in Evolution is the base of some 

 grander peak. Speech, whether by writing or by 

 spoken word, is too crude and slow to keep pace with 

 the needs of the now swiftly ascending mind. Man's 

 larger life demands a further specialization of this 

 power. He learned to speak at first because he 

 could not convey his thoughts to his wife at the other 

 side of the wood. It was Space that made him speak. 

 He now learns to speak better because he cannot con- 

 vey his thoughts to the other end of the world. This 

 new distance-language began again at the beginning, 

 just as all Language does, by employing signs. Man 

 invented the telegraph — a little needle which makes 





