14 ON THE CHINESE SYSTEM OP WRITING. 



mcalculahle importance. And so, in fact, it is; but he does not seem to have 

 sufficiently inquired into the cause of the fact that he points out, for he ascribes- 

 it to the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese systems of writino-, 

 the one being symbolic, as he conceives it, and the other alphabetical; whereas, 

 in my opinion, it is rather to be attributed to the difference which exists be- 

 tween the oral languages, to which the same system of writing cannot be 

 applied. I speak here only of the Yojni or polysyllabic languages of the Ja- 

 panese, which is properly their vernacular tongue. 



It is remarkable that these two gentlemen, Mr. Gutzlaflf and Mr. Medhurst, 

 both profess to be, and no doubt are, acquainted with the Japanese, as well as 

 with the Chinese language; how, then, does it happen that they differ so 

 widely on a subject which must be equally familiar to them both? "With the 

 most unfeigned respect for those venerable missionaries, I am forced to pre- 

 sume that they have studied the Chinese and Indo-Chinese languages so as to 

 make them subservient to the performance of the duties of their holy office, 

 without paying much attention to them in a philological point of view, so that 

 they have been led into, perhaps, too general conclusions from the facts which 

 have come under their observation. This appears to me to be sufficiently 

 proved by the example of the Rev. Mr. Medhurst, who did not rectify his ideas 

 on the subject of the Japanese language until an interlineal translation, joined 

 to a Chinese text, convinced him that the Chinese characters were not so fami- 

 liar to the Japanese as he had conceived. 



In what I have ventured to write on the subject of the Chinese system of 

 writing I have had no object in view but the discovery of truth. I found 

 that subject involved in mystery; the Chinese characters represented by 

 enthusiasm as something supernatural; their origin attributed to the philo- 

 sophical combinations of a barbarous people; their effects magnified to a degree 

 that exceeds belief; in short, I saw those characters raised to the rank of an 

 original, of a universal language, to which spoken idioms were subordinate, 

 and, as it were, auxiliary. My plain common sense revolted against those extra- 

 vagant ideas, and I tried, with feeble means, to discover what that so much 

 extolled system really was, and to bring it within the general rule by which it 

 appears to me that all systems of writing are governed, which is to make it am 

 ocular representation or image of spoken language, with which mankind 

 began to communicate with each other, long before they thought of repre- 



