280 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, 



the same empire. It is easy to conceive, to adopt the language of Sir George 

 Staunton, as applied to the most perfect system of the kind tliat has ever been 

 actually carried into execution, that it would consist of " a plan of which it 

 may justly be said, that the practice is no less inconvenient and perplexing 

 than the theory is beautiful and ingenious."* If a distinct character were to 

 be employed to represent every distinct idea, the number of distinct charac- 

 ters would be almost incalculable : if a few distinct or simple characters only 

 were to be made use of to represent such ideas as are most common, and the 

 rest were to be expressed by combinations of these, though the number of 

 distinct characters would be in some degree diminished, the memory would 

 still have a difficult task to retain them : and the combinations would, in a 

 thousand instances, be embarrassing and intricate. 



Under this pressure of evils there can be no doubt that a contemplative 

 mind, in whatever part of the world placed, would soon begin to reflect on the 

 possibility of avoiding them, by making the contracted characters now in use, 

 or any other set in their stead, significative of sounds or words rather than of 

 things or images. By minute attention it would soon be discovered, that such 

 an art, which would require, indeed, a general convention or agreement in 

 order to its being generally embraced or understood, might be effected with 

 less difficulty than would at first be imagined. It would be perceived that 

 the distinct articulate sounds in any or in every language, as I had occasion 

 to observe in our last lecture, are not many, and in every language are the same 

 or nearly so : that in lew languages they exceed twenty, and in none, perhaps 

 thirty ;! and that consequently from twenty to thirty arbitrary marks or alpha- 

 betical characters might be ample to express every simple sound, and, by 

 their combinations, to denote every separate word or intermixture of sounds :| 

 whence a written language might be formed, addressed to the ear instead of to 

 the eye, symbolical of oral language, and, of course, possessing the whole of its 

 accuracy and precision ; and as much more easy of attainment as it would 

 be more definite and comprehensive.^ 



I have thus drawn a sketch of what there can be but little doubt would be 

 the case provided mankind were at this moment to be deprived by a miracle 

 of all legible language, and reduced to the state in which we may conceive 

 the world to have existed in its earliest ages. The art of writing would com- 

 mence with imitative, and terminate in symbolical characters; it would 

 first describe by pictures or marks of things addressed to the eye, and after 

 having passed through various stages of improvement would finish in letters, 

 or marks of words addressed to the ear. 



This is not a speculative representation ; for I shall now proceed to show, 

 as far as the period of time to which we are limited will allow me, that 

 what we have thus supposed would take place has actually taken place : that 

 wherever alphabetic characters exist, or have existed, we have direct proofs, 

 or strong reasons for believing, that they have been preceded by picture or 

 imitative characters; and that wherever picture or imitative characters, the 

 language of things, still continue to exist, instead of having been preceded by 

 alphabetic characters, they have a strong tendency to run into them, and pro- 

 bably will run into them in the upshot. And in this view of the subject I am 

 supported by many of the most celebrated philologists of the age, as Bishop 

 Warburton, the President de Brosses, Mr. Astle, M. Fourmont, M. Gibelin. 



The remains of Egyptian sculpture are but few; but they are sufficient to 

 afford us specimens of each of the kinds of writing I have adverted to ; 



* Ta Tsing Leu Lee. Pref. p. xiv. 



t "Mr. Sheridan says the number of simple sounds in our tongue are twenty-eight. Dr. Kenrick says, 

 we have only eleven distinct species of articulate sounds ; which, even by contraction, prolongation, and 

 composition, are increased only to the number of sixteen; every syllable or articulate sound in our lan- 

 guage being one of this number. Bishop Wilkins and Dr. William Holden speak of about thirty-two or 

 thirty-three distinct sounds." — Astle, p. 18. 



t Tacquet asserts, that the various combinations of the twenty-four letters (without any repetition) will 

 amount to 620,448,401,733,239,439,360,000.— Arithm. Theor. p. 517, ed. Amst. 1704. Clavivis makes them 

 only 5,852,616,738,497,664,000. In either case, however, it is evident, " that twenty-four letters will admit 

 of an infinity of combinations and arrangements sufficient to represent not only all the conceptions of the 

 mind, but all words in all languages whatever."— Astle, p. 20. In like manner, ten simple marks are found 

 sufl[icient for all the purposes of universal calculations which extend to infinity ; and seven notes, differ* 

 ently arranged, fill up the whole scale of music, § De Brosses, sur I'Drigin de 1' Alphabet. 



