086' PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS.' [aNNO 1 769. 



shapes and the symbols have passed from a contour sufficiently regular, to some 

 lines or strokes oddly assembled : and that the strokes themselves have been yet 

 decompounded, and melted, into these 6, ^ .^^J I i'T o"t of which, at 

 present, are composed all the character^ in use. The simplest are made of 1 or 

 2 of these strokes ; and they count as far as 20 or 30, or more of them, in the 

 more compound characters. To avoid the confusion and obscurity which this 

 great abbreviation would have caused, they have fixed the number of the strokes 

 of the characters which represent the 200 elementary images and symbols spoken 

 of. These abbreviations thus fixed are called pou, classes, or tribunals, as Mr. 

 Fourmont translates. For example; the pou of man, of woman, of trees, of 

 diseases, of great, of small, of vase, &c. In brief, for greater clearness, and to 

 range the characters in the dictionaries, there is in each character a distinctive 

 or differencing pou, which predominates, and under which the character is 

 placed. This differencing pou is the part of the character which has most in- 

 fluence in its signification ; saving the exceptions, and oddities, from which the 

 Chinese is no more exempt than other tongues. A bare inspection into the dic- 

 tionary Tching-tsee-tong, will render these details intelligible. '"' ''' ' '" '''''' 

 The misfortune, and a very great one, of the Chinese characters is, that these 

 abbreviations have been made by little and little, in different places, and without 

 rule : so that there are characters which have been abridged, or more properly 

 truncated, and disfigured a great number of ways : and the most part, so much, 

 as to be no longer knowable by the primitive form. To give' some idea of this, 

 the author has caused to be copied the variations of 4 characters ; and one may 

 judge by this sample, how frightfully disfigured must those characters be, which 

 are woven out of several other characters. For the different characters which 

 are thus united to make one only, are curved, lowered, lengthened, drawn in, or 

 contracted, to the end that each stroke may be so placed, as that all together may 

 make the contrast of a simple character, and occupy no more space than it does. 

 A like constraint ought to disfigure many of the elementary characters which are 

 joined together to make one only. But when we add to this, the abbreviations 

 and various readings, it is clear that they can no longer be knowable by their 

 primitive characters. And this, to observe it en passant, is one of the reasons 

 which has rendered the edition of the king under the ban so difficult, and per- 

 haps is the principal cause of their obscurity. In effect, the primitive images and 

 Symbols being altered, how can one find the sense of them ? It is no more ac- 

 cording to the rule of the Lieou-y. The decomposition of the elementary cha- 

 racters of which it is composed, no longer gives its true analysis. The more 

 one seeks the sense which ought to result from their assemblage, the farther one 

 is from it : because that this assemblage is not the true one. It is as if we should 

 read (in French) delifes for delices. This change of the c into r subsisting, all 



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