SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 131 



ought to place the Phoenicians nearly on a 

 par with their brothers, the Hebrews and 

 Arabs, in the history of progress, our 

 alphabet. You know that the characters 

 which we now use are, through a thousand 

 transformations, the same with which the 

 Shemites first expressed the sounds of their 

 language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, 

 from which our European alphabets are all 

 derived, are no other than the Phoenician 

 alphabet. Phonetic writing, that luminous 

 idea of expressing each articulation by a 

 sign, and reducing these articulations to a 

 small number twenty-two, was an inven- 

 tion of the Shemites. But for them, we 

 should, perhaps, still be draggling on pain- 

 fully with hieroglyphics. It may, therefore, 

 be said, in one sense, that the Phoenicians, 

 whose literature has so unhappily entirely 

 disappeared, have thus fixed the essential 

 condition to all firm and precise exercise of 

 thought. 



But I hasten to pass on, gentlemen, to 

 the chief service which the Shemitic ract- 



