Fourthly, If we admit the very proba hie hypothesis of De Guignes, that the Chinese characters were brought from Egypt, and that they had originally no connection with the spoken language of the country into which they were im ported ;—that, in fact, they were applied to denote names different from those with which they had been before con nected ;—we shall perceive at once the reason why the combinations of the cha racters were originally unaccompanied with corresponding combinations of sounds: After this there is no difficulty in admitting that the written must con tinue independent of the spoken lan guage, especially among people so little addicted to innovation as the Chinese.
3. It is urged that the invention of let ters is ascribed to the gods by several of the ancients ; that Pliny asserts the use of letters to have been eternal ; and that the Jewish doctors maintain that God created alphabetical writing.
We say, in reply, that the Jews had no other records than our own. The an cients were accustomed to ascribe to a divine origin every thing for which they could not account. As for Pliny, he eX pressly says, that the Phenicians were famed as the inventors of letters.
It must be remarked that these facts are adduced to prove that no records of the invention remain ; indirectly-, there fore, they favour the hypothesis of the divine origin of letters. If, however, the transition were simple and gradual, per haps the era of invention could not have been fixed even by the nation in which it occurred. We have no more reason to expect records of the invention of letters than of .the Egyptian hieroglyphics, or of the Chinese characters.
The arguments d priori for the divine origin of letters, remain to be consider ed. These are, the difficulty of the in vention in any stage of human progress, and its antiquity, which very much in creases the improbability of its human origin.
1. As to the difficulty of the invention, it is urged that we are to suppose that the inventors of letters decomposed the sounds of words not only into syllables, but into letters; that observing the com ponent parts of syllables, and denoting them by appropriate marks, they used these marks for those elementary sounds in the visible representation of other words into which those sounds entered. This dissection of the articulate sounds of man, tracing them through all their various combinations, and denoting them by a few simple marks, whose combina tions might express every possible com bination of sound, supposes a habit Of patient experimenting, of discriminating examination, and of exact classification, which ill accord with the uncultivated state of human intellect in the early pe riod of society. But, 2. When we consider the the use of letters, and find them in a state of perfection so early as the time of Mo ses, this difficulty appears insuperable. We must admit that men, in the earliest ages, stepped at once from a tedious arid awkward, and frequently unintelligible mode of communication, to one which answers every purpose in the shortest way, and that, unlike all other inven tions, it was brought at once to such a state of perfection, that no succeeding alphabet has any real superiority over the ancient Hebrew.
With respect to the difficulty of the in.
vention, the objection loses all its foe when a simple and easy procedure, prb bable in the given circumstances„9J1 be pointed out. To obviate the difficulty arising from the apparent perfection tif the most ancient alphabets, we may ob serve, First, That in a perfect alphabet every letter should represent only one definite sound, and every known sound in the gi ven language should have a correspond ing letter. Now we have no instance of a perfect alphabet among modern lan guages, and have therefore no reason to suppose that the first alphabet was per fect. But even admitting that some of the ancient alphabets which have been trans mitted to us were perfect, yet it must be observed, Secondly, Tfiat no known alphabet, however ancient, is in the state of its ori ginal invention. Cadmus, who was born in the east, carried with him into Greece sixteen letters only ; the least copious al phabet we are acquainted with has twen ty-two. It is not probable that Cadmus introduced fewer than be possessed; is more probable that he invented new ones to express sounds which he found among the aborigines.
It has generally been supposed of late, that alphabetical writing was formed from hieroglyphics; but we have met with no one, except De Guignes, who has stated the steps of the transition in a satisfactory manner. " Perhaps," says this writer, "we have done too much honour to the inventor of letters, whoever he were, in supposing that he dissected the voice into two parts, and invented marks of two kinds, some to represent consonants, and others vowels." The following is, with some variations, the hypothesis of this writer. Hierogly phics, with their exactness of delineation, lost their original significancy. This must first be the case with words of most fre quent recurrence, and which entered most into combinations with other words; become simple denotements of sound, they were employed to express their respective sounds in combinations of other monosyllabic words, which, in like manner, had lost their original significan cy. Hence, by degrees, they became re presentative of the component parts of all words into which their respective hounds entered. They were always words, but very simple, consisting only of a consonant and a vowel. Variation in the pronunciation of the vowel would occur in different dialects, and hence these marks would be regarded as con sonants capable of being differently mo dified by simple vocal sounds. Letters, at first monosyllabic words, then became marks for the component parts of dissyl labic or polysyllabic words ; and then for the unchangeable part of those syllableg; that is, for consonants. In the most an. cient state of the oriental languageS, vowel sounds had no distinct marks. In the latter, marks were joined to the con sonants to express the different sounds with which the radical consonant was in vested. Among the western nations, a different procedure was adopted. In some cases they used the mark which they had received from the oriental na tions for an aspirate and vowel, for the vowel itself; and having once commenc ed the use of distinct marks for vowels, the procedure was continued, and new marks adopted to express noticed varia tions of vocal sounds.