insurrection, and beheaded the governors of four of his provinces, would be wholly blind and unintelligible to the mass of the population of such a country; and if the learned sculptor who inscribed it, were to attempt to explain it to them, letter by letter, they would forget the beginning of the lesson before reaching the end of it, – and could never be expected to attempt extending the knowledge by making known the interpretation which they had received to others in their turn. But the royal scepter, with the four heads before it, each of the heads accompanied by the appropriate symbol of the city to which the possessor of it belonged, formed a symbolical congeries which expressed its meaning at once, and very plainly, to the eye. The most ignorant and uncultivated could readily understand it. Once understanding it, too, they could never easily forget it; and they could, without any difficulty, explain it fully to others as ignorant and uncultivated as themselves.
Comparison of the two systems.
It might seem, at first view, that a symbolical mode of writing must be more simple in its character than the system now in use, inasmuch as by that plan each idea or object would be expressed by one character alone, whereas, by our mode of writing, several characters, sometimes as many as eight or ten, are required to express a word, which word, after all, represents only one single object or idea. But notwithstanding this apparent simplicity, the system of symbolical writing proved to be, when extensively employed, extremely complicated and intricate. It is true that each idea required but one character, but the number of ideas and objects, and of words expressive of their relations to one another, is so vast, that the system of representing them by independent symbols, soon lost itself in an endless intricacy of detail. Then, besides, – notwithstanding what has been said of the facility with which symbolical inscriptions could be interpreted, – they were, after all, extremely difficult to be understood without interpretation. An inscription once explained, the explanation was easily understood and remembered; but it was very difficult to understand one intended to express any new communication. The system was, therefore, well adapted to commemorate what was already known, but was of little service as a mode of communicating knowledge anew.
Further comparison of the two systems.
Two modes of representing the idea of a battle.
We come now to consider the second grand class of written characters, namely, the phonetic, the class which Cadmus introduced into Greece, and the one almost universally adopted among all the European nations at the present day. It is called Phonetic, from a Greek word denoting sound, because the characters which are used do not denote directly the thing itself which is signified, but the sounds made in speaking the word which signifies it. Take, for instance, the two modes of representing a conflict between two contending armies, one by the symbolic delineation of two swords crossed, and the other by the phonetic delineation of the letters of the word battle. They are both inscriptions. The beginning of the first represents the handle of the sword, a part, as it were, of the thing signified. The beginning of the second, the letter b, represents the pressing of the lips together, by which we commence pronouncing the word. Thus the one mode is symbolical, and the other phonetic.
Great advantages of the phonetic mode of writing.
On considering the two methods, as exemplified in this simple instance, we shall observe that what has already been pointed out as characteristic of the two modes is here seen to be true. The idea is conveyed in the symbolical mode by one character, while by the phonetic it requires no less than six. This seems at first view to indicate a great advantage possessed by the symbolical system. But on reflection this advantage is found entirely to disappear. For the symbolical character, though it is only one, will answer for only the single idea which it denotes. Neither itself nor any of its elements will aid us in forming a symbol for any other idea; and as the ideas, objects, and relations which it is necessary to be able to express, in order to make free and full communications in any language, are from fifty to a hundred thousand, – the step which we have taken, though very simple in itself, is the beginning of a course which must lead to the most endless intricacy and complication. Whereas in the six phonetic characters of the word battle, we have elements which can be used again and again, in the expression of thousands of other ideas. In fact, as the phonetic characters which are found necessary in most languages are only about twenty-four, we have in that single word accomplished one quarter of the whole task, so far as the delineation of characters is concerned, that is necessary for expressing by writing any possible combination of ideas which human language can convey.
Uncertainty of the origin of phonetic writing.
At what time and in what manner the transition was made among the ancient nations from the symbolic to the phonetic mode of writing, is not now known. When in the flourishing periods of the Grecian and Roman states, learned men explored the literary records of the various nations of the East, writings were found in all, which were expressed in phonetic characters, and the alphabets of these characters were found to be so analogous to each other, in the names and order, and in some respects in the forms, of the letters, as to indicate strongly something like community of origin. All the attempts, however, which have been made to ascertain the origin of the system, have wholly failed, and no account of them goes farther back than to the time when Cadmus brought them from Phenicia or Egypt into Greece.
Cadmus's alphabet.
The letters which Cadmus brought were in number sixteen. The following table presents a view of his alphabet, presenting in the several columns, the letters themselves as subsequently written in Greece, the Greek names given to them, and their power as represented by the letters now in use. The forms, it will be seen, have been but little changed.
Difficulties attending the introduction of it.
Different modes of writing.
The phonetic alphabet of Cadmus, though so vastly superior to any system of symbolical hieroglyphics, for all purposes where any thing like verbal accuracy was desired, was still very slow in coming into general use. It was of course, at first, very difficult to write it, and very difficult to read it when written. There was a very great practical obstacle, too, in the way of its general introduction, in the want of any suitable materials for writing. To cut letters with a chisel and a mallet upon a surface of marble is a very slow and toilsome process. To diminish this labor the ancients contrived tables of brass, copper, lead, and sometimes of wood, and cut the inscriptions upon them by the use of various tools and implements. Still it is obvious, that by such methods as these the art of writing could only be used to an extremely limited extent, such as for brief inscriptions in registers and upon monuments, where a very few words would express all that it was necessary to record.
In process of time, however, the plan of painting the letters by means of a black dye upon a smooth surface, was introduced. The surface employed to receive these inscriptions was, at first, the skin of some animal prepared for this purpose, and the dye used for ink, was a colored liquid obtained from a certain fish. This method of writing, though in some respects more convenient than the others, was still slow, and the materials were expensive; and it was a long time before the new art was employed for any thing like continuous composition. Cadmus is supposed to have come into Greece about the year 1550 before Christ; and it was not until about 650 before Christ, – that is, nearly nine hundred years later, that the art of writing was resorted to in Greece to record laws.
The art of writing at first very little used.
Proofs of this.
Story of the lots.
The evidences that writing was very little used in any way during this long period of nine hundred years, are furnished in various allusions contained in poems and narratives that were composed during those times, and committed to writing afterward. In the poems of Homer, for instance, there
