374 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
figures aud w riting ; for there is no tribe so poor, so brutal, so little advanced 
as entirely to do witliout them. 
"It is to the collecting of these signs, in bringing them together and com- 
parhig them, that 1 have specially devoted myself. Before arranging a manu- 
factured Hint 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 arc 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 writmg, 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 despau', 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 vi'Oidd 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 aud less profound ideas ; but they 
were not, any more than ourselves, wanting in sense, nor would they, anymore 
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 rehgious, 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 oui' 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 t o 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 stiU more difhcult to doubt that by their relatioushijis 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 
created thing it has had its beginning. This beginning has been simple, as it 
is still amongst savages ; for, 1 repeat it, I do not believe that any are so abso- 
lutely unlettered, ignorant, or unintelligent as not to have any scripture what 
ever. Is there amongst ourselves a man reputed to know neither how to read 
or WTite that has not his own ? Ask this clown, this meclianic, this labourer — 
Le writes liis accounts in his own mamier, but he icrUes them. 
" So also aU the burrowing peoples ; they write on the sand, on the trees, on 
the rocks. It is thus that they indicate their meeting places for war, for the 
