20 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION 



impression upon the eye, in like manner their pictorial 

 representations must be the same or similar in the 

 various picture-languages and hieroglyphics, and it is not 

 surprising that Egyptian, Chinese, and American hierogly- 

 phics, though originating at different ages, places, and 

 among different men, should resemble each other so much. 

 Where ideas are represented in picture-writing, the figures 

 chosen for description explain the mode of thinking, and thus 

 afford a guide to the thought of the writer. Hieroglyphics 

 are generally drawings copied from the objects of nature they 

 are intended to represent. These pictures refer also to the 

 thoughts, actions, or conditions these same objects produce. 

 Hieroglyphics have thus 'one sign for all the variations of 

 meaning, an image of the eye expresses as well the eye itself, 

 as sight, to see, visible, &c. This stage of writing corre- 

 sponds therefore to the monosyllabic or uninflectional stage 

 of speech. Moreover as spoken words are changing and 

 shifting, few words continue the same. Writing preserves 

 words which might otherwise be lost. The real cause of 

 the continual change of words met with in savage languages 

 lies in the want of a fixed literature or of the means of 

 creating and preserving one by writing. As long as books 

 are learnt by heart, and men who know them only thus 

 represent living copies of books, an extensive literature 

 cannot exist. Writing does not alone preserve, but also 

 increases the productions of the mind. 



If languages could be found existing in their most ancient 

 form, the process of retracing the mental path in the growth 

 of speech would certainly be much facilitated ; but as yet a 

 language which provides us with authentic materials for 

 ascertaining its original enunciations is a desideratum. 

 Only a few words, including those which are derived from 

 the first utterances of children, or which are imitations of 

 sound, or of perceptions of other senses, belong to the earliest 

 stratum of speech ; the majority of utterances are of a later 



