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CHAPTER V. 



PICTUEE-WEITING AND WORD -WEITINQ. 



The art of recording events, and sending messages, by means 

 of pictures representing tlie things or actions in question, is 

 called Picture-Writing. 



The deaf-and-dumb man's remark, that the gesture -language 

 is a picture-language, finds its counterpart in an observation of 

 Wilhelm von Humboldt's, that " In fact, gesture, destitute of 

 sound, is a species of writing." There is indeed a very close 

 relation between these two ways of expressing and communi- 

 cating thought. Gesture can set forth thought with far greater 

 speed and fulness than picture-writiug, but it is inferior to it 

 in having to place the different elements of a sentence in suc- 

 cession, in single file, so to speak; while by a picture the 

 whole of an event may be set in view at one glance, and that 

 permanently, so as to serve as a message to a distant place or 

 a record to a future time. But the imitation of visible qua- 

 lities as a means of expressing ideas, is common to both me- 

 thods, and both belong to similar conditions of the human 

 mind. Both are found in very distant countries and times, 

 and spring up naturally under favourable circumstances, pro- 

 vided that a higher means of supplying the same wants has 

 not already occupied the place which they can only fill very 

 partially and rudely. 



There being so great a likeness between the conditions 

 which cause the use of the gesture-language and of picture- 

 writing, it is not surprising to find the natives of North Ame- 



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