200 JHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO ]686. 



more of those of the second sort, diminished proportionably in their size, either 

 as to their length or breadth, or both, from what they have in the same writing, 

 when they are single, and fill up the whole letter square or word's square. 

 This method alone of crowding together all the characters of a decompounded 

 one into one square, which is of the same size both for the most simple and the 

 most compound, seems to be the great singularity, by which the Chinese cha- 

 racters differ from those of all the rest of the world. And this probably is the 

 reason why they are taken for a real, and not a literal character : for if the primi- 

 tive language, or pronunciation of the characters, be lost, or not understood^ 

 then the whole characters become a real, and not a literal character. But I 

 conceive it might be at first either a literal character, and so the whole square 

 character be composed of so many distinct letters or syllables, which composed 

 the word intended ; and so there might be a regular order of placing these let- 

 ters in the character ; that is, that the whole square being divided into so many 

 parts, there was a rule for finding which was the l st, 2d, 3d, and 4th place ; so 

 that the several letters, that made up the word, being placed in those, accord- 

 ing to the order they had in the word, it was easy, by that rule, to decipher 

 the said character, and thence to find the word and its signification, as regularly 

 as if the letters had been written one after another, like all other literal cha- 

 racters. Or secondly, it might be a real character, consisting of several marks 

 or letters, that expressed so many simple notions, several of which, joined to- 

 gether, might make up the more compounded characters. 



The present use of this character seems to differ from what it was at first, 

 both as to the position of writing and reading it, and as to its expression and 

 pronunciation. For the way of writing and reading it might at first be exactly 

 the same with the European ; that is, they might begin at the top of the page 

 towards the left hand, and so proceed towards the right in the horizontal line to 

 the end of it ; then beginning at the left end of the next line under the first, 

 and proceeding with that in the same manner ; and so with the next under that, 

 and all the remaining, till the whole discourse was completed, joining leaf to 

 leaf, one under another, after the same manner as the rolls are at present writ- 

 ten, and as the Volumina of the ancients were. And that the parts of the 

 volume might be the more easily come at, without the trouble of rolling and 

 unrolling, they contrived to fold them like a fan, forwards and backwards, 

 stitching them together so as that the written sides might lie outwards, and 

 open freely from each other, and the fair sides meeting together ; it came to 

 make the present form of their books, which being laid, as we generally place 

 our books before us, they seem to begin at the top of the page on the right- 

 hand, and to proceed to the bottom, and then at the top of the next line to- 



