IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 



313 



These are strictly abbreviated pictures, such as symbols or emblems of 

 some kind or other. But the characters now in use are abbreviations of 

 these abbreviations ; and hence have, for the most part, the appearance of 

 being arbitrary marks, though we can still so frequently trace the parent 

 image, as to decipher their origin and reference. 



The Chinese is an extraordinary language in every respect. Its radical 

 words do not exceed four hundred and eleven ; every one of which is a 

 monosyllable. But, as it must be obvious, that these can by no means 

 answer the purpose of distinguishing every external object and mental idea, 

 unless varied in some way or other, every one of these four hundred and 

 eleven words is possessed of a number of different tones and combinations 

 with other words ; and every tone or combination signifies a different thing ; 

 so that the whole vocabulary, limited as it is, may be readily made to ex- 

 press several thousands of ideas. Thus the vvordjTM, which enters into 

 the well-known compound Kong-fu-tsee, or Confucms, pronounced in dif- 

 ferent manners, imports a husband or father^ a iown, and various other 

 ideas. So Mom, imports a mouth ; but pronounced nasally, as Jchoongy 

 it denotes empty ; and thus the word sku^ differently uttered, means both 

 a lord and a swine. 



The whole of the elementary marks, or keys as they are called, by 

 which the ideas of this language, for it is not the language itself, are writ- 

 ten down and communicated, are still fewer than the elementary words ; 

 for they are only two hundred and fourteen, and express such ideas alone 

 as are most common and familiar ; as those plants hand., mouthy word^ 

 sun^ nothing., water ; every other idea being denoted by compounds, or 

 supposed compounds of these elementary marks. Thus, the mark for a 

 thicket, if doubled, implies a wood ; and the union of the two characters 

 of a man and a field signifies a farmer ; the characters of a hand and a 

 staff united, import parental authority, or a father ; and it is from like 

 characters I have selected the specimen of symbols which I have mostly 

 submitted to you as some of those which would probably be invented in 

 the present day, if, by a miracle, we were suddenly to be deprived of ail 

 knowledge of alphabetic writing. 



By combinations of this kind, the two hundred and fourteen elementary 

 characters, like the four hundred elementary words, are wonderfully in- 

 creased, and are daily increasing ; while the greater mass have so little re- 

 semblance to any one of the genuine elements, that the philologists of the 

 present day regard many of them as primitive or independent signs, formed 

 long subsequently to the invention of the proper elements, and combined, 

 like themselves, in various ways. 



^ I have said that the sum total of Chinese characters derived from these 

 sources is perpetually increasing ; and have also hinted, that from this na- 

 tural tendency, the language must at length become an intolerable burden 

 even to the most assiduous Chinese scholar. Thus, while all the charac- 

 ters that occur in Confucius, in Mung, and the five kings, or sacred 

 books, forming together more than twenty volumes, fall considerably short 

 of six thousand, including the numerous unusual words found in the four 

 volumes of the Shu ; (and I may add, that the scope is much the same in 

 the celebrated ethical comment of Tung-tsee, the favourite disciple of 

 Confucius, denominated Ta-hyoh, the Great Sublime or Momentous 

 Doctrine," as also in the Choong-yoong, Zun-zu, and Mun, constituting, 

 conjointly, the four books most revered next to the Kings ;) — such has 

 been the accession of new terms invented bv subsequent writers, and often 



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