374 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



figures and writing ; for there is no tribe so poor, so brutal, so little advanced 

 as entirely to do without them. 



" It is to the collecting of these signs, in bringing them together and com- 

 paring them, that I have specially devoted myself. Before arranging a manu- 

 factured flint in the class of types, I have assured myself that this type was 

 met with in various localities. A single example was no proof ; I only admitted 

 those of which I had assembled a certain number of like examples. 



"We distinguish amongst the drawings which I have given the flint 

 types or characters from those which are not. Since my last publication I have 

 augmented the number of these characters, which now exceeds that of the 

 letters of our alphabet. That I may be forgiven for this comparison, it is not 

 so hazardous as it seems ; for in these hieroglyphics of stone I believe I have 

 seen a revealing of the primitive writing, and the original means of transmitting 

 thought beyond speech, 



" I have searched closely for the key to this language of stones ; but for a 

 much longer time was that of the hieroglyphics asked of ancient Egypt, and it 

 is only in our days that Champollion found it. We do not despair, then, of 

 arriving at the explanation of these antediluvian signs. Less numerous and 

 less complex than the Egyptian and Assyrian hieroglyphics, they ought to be 

 of easier solution. 



"Resuming our preceding subject, we say these signs exist, that is certain ; that 

 they are also the work of men cannot be doubted ; and that they are not the re- 

 sult of a simple caprice is proved by their number and their constant analogy. 



" If they be the work of men, and a work repeated from generation to gene- 

 ration, the work must have had an object and an application. The primitive 

 men would have been more simple and more ignorant than we are — that is to 

 say, would have had less experience, fewer topics of remembrance, fewer terms 

 of comparison, and hence embracing fewer and less profound ideas ; but they 

 were not, any more than ourselves, wanting in sense, nor would they, any more 

 than we would, take trouble for nothing — that is to say, without any object or 

 any need. If they have made signs, if they have made them in great numbers, 

 it is because they were useful. 



" Now if it were neither as trinket nor utensil, it follows that it was as a means 

 of being understood — as an intellectual or religious, representative or com- 

 memorative sign — a sign materializing a thought, rendering it palpable — in 

 short, representing a divinity like our idols, a value like our money, or a per- 

 petuation like our writing. 



" Of all these versions, whichever we may adopt, one can but see in these 

 types of_ stone the result of a thought, the desire to transmit it, and to render 

 it enduring. 



" If these signs are ranged in a certain order, if in their diversity they have 

 amongst themselves similarity of material, size, make, or workmanship, it will 

 be still more difficult to doubt that by their relationships it may not have been 

 wished to extend and complicate the idea — that is to say, to create phrases by 

 the combination of words, and of pages by the Imking together of phrases ? 



Writing, such as civilized peoples understand and practice it, is a science ; 

 but this science, so complex now, has not always been so; like every other 

 eroatod thing it has had its beginning. This beginning has been simple, as it 

 is still amongst savages ; for, I repeat it, I do not believe that any are so abso- 

 iiUcly unlettered, ignorant, or uninteUigent as not to have any scriptm-e what 

 ever, _ Is there amongst ourselves a man reputed to know neither how to read 

 or write that has not his own ? Ask this clown, this mechanic, this labourer — 

 he writes his accounts in his own manner, but he 2crites them. 



" So also all tjie burrowing ]:)eoples _; they write on the sand, on the trees, on 

 the rocks. It is thus that they indicate then' meeting places for war, for the 



