DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALPHABET 



any one been genius enough to make such analysis 

 would have given the key to simpler and better things. 

 But such an analysis was very hard to make, as the 

 sequel shows. Nor is the utility of such an analysis 

 self-evident, as the experience of the Egyptians proved. 

 The vowel sound is so intimately linked with the con- 

 sonant the con- sonant, implying this intimate re- 

 lation in its very name that it seemed extremely 

 difficult to give it individual recognition. To set off 

 the mere labial beginning of the sound by itself, and to 

 recognize it as an all-essential element of phonation, 

 was the feat at which human intelligence so long 

 balked. The germ of great things lay in that analysis. 

 It was a process of simplification, and all art develop- 

 ment is from the complex to the simple. Unfort- 

 unately, however, it did not seem a simplification, but 

 rather quite the reverse. We may well suppose that 

 the idea of wresting from the syllabary its secret of 

 consonants and vowels, and giving to each con- 

 sonantal sound a distinct sign, seemed a most cum- 

 bersome and embarrassing complication to the ancient 

 scholars that is to say, after the time arrived when 

 any one gave such an idea expression. We can 

 imagine them saying: "You will oblige us to use four 

 signs instead of one to write such an elementary 

 syllable as 'bard,' for example. Out upon such end- 

 less perplexity!" Nor is such a suggestion purely 

 gratuitous, for it is an historical fact that the old 

 syllabary continued to be used in Babylon hundreds 

 of years after the alphabetical system had been 

 introduced. 7 Custom is everything in establishing 

 our prejudices. The Japanese to-day rebel against 

 7 97 



