In the Chinese dictionaries the keys are placed in an invariable order, which soon becomes familiar to the student. The .ifferent compounds each follow one mother according to the number of strokes of which each consists. The meaning and pronunciation are given by means of two words in common use. When no one common word expresses the exact sound, it is communicated by two connected, with marks to show that the consonant of the first word and the vowel of the second, joined together,form the precise sound wanting. Thus, to ex press the sound pier, pa and mien would be joined, with marks to denote the elision of the a and the 01.
If the spoken language be.scanty, this is not the defect of the written language. Their Characters amount to 80,000. A considerable part of them, however, may be considered as synonima ; thus age may be expressed by a hundred different characters, and happiness may be traced into as many forms in expressing the ge neral wish for it. Different sects have their own characters ; so that when a pro per allowance is made, about 10,000 are sufficient for reading the best books of each literary period of their language. In alphabetical writing words may be read without the least knowledge of their meaning; in the hieroglyphical, the sound is less intimately connected with the visi• ble sign, and the character is studied and best learned by becoming acquainted with the ideas attached to it. But the terms of philosophy have been formed on that philosophy, so that a knowledge of the latter is necessary to a complete acquaintance with the former. These ideas we must call to mind when we hear that their most learned men are not ac quainted with more than half of them. The knowledge of the whole round of Chinese science and literature must sure ly be sufficient to occupy the life of the longest liver.
Transition to Letters.
Upon the principle that we ought not to suppose divine interposition, merely from the difficulty of accounting for a phenomenon, we should argue d priori that no divine interposition took place in the origin of alphabetical writing. As, however, some presumptive arguments in favour of the affirmative side of the question have been advanced by men of the' first eminence, we shall state the most important of them, and after endea vouring to lessen the difficulty they may present to our admission of the human origin of letters, we shall point out what appears to be the most probable ac count of their invention.
1. It is urged that in order to give any plausibility to the hypothesis of the hu man invention of letters, it must be shown to be simple. Now if it were simple and obvious, it is highly probable that we should find instances of independent in vention. But the filet is, that alphabeti cal writing may be traced to one source.
Two answers may be given to this ar gument. First. There is such a great similarity among the Asiatic alphabets, that they cannot be proved to have issued froM the same source. It. must, however, be remarked, that the variations which we know to have taken place in numer ous instances would destroy the force of any objection that might occur from this decided dissimilarity, if positive argu ments were adduced to establish their identity of origin. But though these are
apparently sufficient to render it proba ble, yet this probability is not great enough to give much weight to the ment in question. But even admitting its certainty, we may observe, secondly, that this can prove no more than the high antiquity of the invention. That it origi nated before mankind were much separa ted from each other ; and that the ground work, laid by those who had made the greatest advances in cultivation, was built upon in different ways by those who af terwards penetrated to the remoter parts of the Continent. But it is urged, 2. That we not only have no instance of independent discovery, but have even the example of a nation which had no communication with those among whom it was first known, remaining in total ig norance of it, and employing a procedure which now incapacitates them for the adoption of alphabetical writing. And the force of this objection is materially increased by the circumstance, that their writing, equally with the alphabetical, originated in the hieroglyphics, and ac tually went through the same stages, viz. from the simple picture to the arbi trary mark. The grand weight of the controversy appears to rest here. The difficulty this argument presents, may probably be obviated by the following considerations: First, The written language of China was cultivated more for the purposes of literature and philosophy than for those of common life ; the combinations were formed by the literati, and it probably would not have been in their power to have carried these combinations intothe oral language of the vulgar. They might indeed have invented an oral language corresponding to their characters ; but the genius of the Chinese seems rather to direct them to study than to conversa tion. In order to render probable a transition from hieroglyphics to letters, we must suppose the spoken and the written language to have been connect ed with each other, and to have had si milar combinations. Now we may ob serve, Secondly, That the spoken language of China did not at all favour the plan of making their characters representative of sound, for being all monosyllables, and not very numerous, there would not be the same call for attention to the elemen tary sounds; and what would still more prevent this direction of the attention, they did not vary the articulation but the tone, in order to express a variation of meaning. Add to this, Thirdly, The great extent of the em pire of China and its dependencies, would cause a great variety in the dia lect. This would contribute to increase the attention of their literati to their written language, since this (as we have seen it actually is) might be understood independently of their words.