A CHINESE DICTIONARY. 403 



characters (and on what grounds) should be accounted primary. 

 My own impression is, that as the main object to be attended to 

 is facility of reference, we ought to be guided by the eye, and 

 whenever a character is clearly made up of others, to treat it as 

 a compound character, whatever the significance of its parts or 

 the relation between them. The great majority, it has been 

 already remarked, of characters, are in this sense compound; 

 and no one who is at all used to Chinese writing, can have 

 any difficulty, except in a few cases, in dividing them into their 

 elements. 



Generally speaking, one or other element is in the Chinese 

 arrangement the radical under which the compound character 

 is placed, and this is the part of the method of radicals which 

 is in practice most convenient. Even so it is defective in giving 

 the compound characters mixed up with others, which on other 

 grounds are placed under the same radical. Still few compound 

 characters, considering their whole number, will be found in the 

 supplementary index. 



Gallery's method differs from what is now suggested in this 

 respect; he does not avail himself* of the analysis of compound 

 characters into simple ones, in all cases in which such an 

 analysis is distinct and obvious, but only in a certain class, 

 though undoubtedly the largest and most important class of 

 cases. 



More than five-sixths, according to one estimate, eleven- 

 twelfths according to another, of all Chinese characters are not 

 only compound, but made up on a uniform plan. 



They admit of analysis into two parts, one of these simpler 

 parts having the same sound as the whole character or a modi- 

 fication of it, and the other having some reference to the mean- 

 ing. Thus the former indicates the pronunciation, and is there- 

 fore called by Gallery ' the phonetic element.' To the other he 

 gives the name ' classifica.' Gon^alves had called the latter 

 Generic, and the former Differential elements f. 



The names are not satisfactory, for the phonetic element 

 may as well be made use of to constitute a class or genus as 



* Or rather, he ought not. 



t I do not apprehend that Gon9alves conceived it necessary that the differen- 

 tial element should always be phonetic. He would have given the name to what- 

 ever he found differentiating a generic character, 



262 



