232 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



went along with it. From being able to say 

 what he knew, Man went on to write what he 

 knew. The Evolution of writing went through the 

 same general stages as the Evolution of Speech. 

 First there was the onomatopoetic writing — as it 

 were, the growl-writing — the ideograph, the imitation 

 of an actual object. This is the form we find fossil 

 in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For a man a man 

 was drawn, for a camel a camel, for a hut a hut. 

 Then intonation was added — accents, that 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 con- 

 veyed the idea of wealth, and because a man with 

 a field was rich, he was supposed to be happy, and 

 the same combination stood, and stands to this 

 day, for contentment. When a roof is drawn and 

 a woman beneath it — or the strokes which repre- 

 sent 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 quietness and rest. 

 Chinese writing is picture-writing, with the pictures 



