Rousseau-the most direct and simple method of communication has seemed to be that of gesture. These philosophers talk of the "plague and confusion of tongues," and dream fondly of an universal language of signs, such as they affirm that the brutes possess. The wonderful development of this gesture language in the case of the deaf and dumb proves its capabilities. It is said (I know not with what truth) that the deaf and dumb of different nations can understand each other by means of this language. Among ourselves, too, how much more expressive than any words may be the quiver of a lip, a glance, the pressure of a hand! The less civilized nations-Orientals and Africans-will convey their thoughts to one another by mute gestures to an extent almost incredible. Even among the more demonstrative civilized nations, such as the Italians and French, how much is signified by a shrug, or an expressive sweep of the hand.

A Portuguese gentleman in Mozambique, passing another rapidly in his drive, will make a quick succession of signs to his friend. At a certain hour on a certain day that friend will answer the summons to dinner or lunch or breakfast.

I need scarcely mention the extraordinary power of communicating thought and feelings that an actor possesses in facial expression and gesture.

It is said that the well-known conspiracy of the Sicilian Vespers was wholly organized by mute signs, without the utterance of a single word.

Cicero, when asked what were the chief requisites of an orator, "There are three," he said. "The first is gesture, the second is gesture, and the third is— gesture."

Such is one method that the imitative power of man has devised. Another is to represent an object or impression not by means of our own bodies, but with other material-depicting therewith the object itself. When Cortez landed in Mexico, a letter was sent to the chief Montezuma with the tidings that white men with enormous canoes had appeared on the coast. I call it a letter. It was a picture of the scene.*

The bushmen of South Africa are generally spoken of as the most degraded specimens of humanity. Yet they possess a literature. It is a literature not of words but of depicted scenes. In many a riverside cave you may read of fierce conflicts with the white conquerors of that land. Here are the blazing villages, the huddling droves of captured cattle, the slain, the fugitives, the victors. Here is a chapter

of their national history.

One step further. Look at this that is unmistakably the sun. And this): still more evidently the moon. This is a mountain. This a dog, and a man: man: a tree. They are just such pictures as a child would draw.

* The Mexicans, however, possessed an alphabet of some kind, as may be seen from an ancient Codex in the Japanese Palace at Dresden.

.

And that is just what they are-letters from the picture-alphabet of a nation's infancy, the alphabet of the ancient Chinese. Some of you may recognize in this an ox's head. It is also the old form of

Aleph, the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. So, too, the Greek Delta (▲) is said to be a tent or tent door. Here is the picture of a saw (§), the Greek letter Xi. Here a whistling, hurtling arrow (4)-Psi.

Is it not evident that these letters—that all letters -were originally nothing more than direct representations, pictures, of the object that he who first figured them wished to present?

But objects are innumerable. There are many also which refuse to be thus represented. How is this difficulty to be surmounted? How, for instance, shall we represent light? By placing the sun and the moon together ). There we have a combination to represent a new conception. Again, here is the mountain-here the man. Put the man over the mountain. That is a man on a mountain-namely a hermit. Here is an eye and water

. It represents tears.* Thus also a picture of a mouth and a bird represents “singing;" an ear at an open door means "curiosity; curiosity;" a mouth at an open door is the note of interrogation.

But it was found necessary to come to some agreement by which the picture should not merely

* These figures are borrowed from Dr. Farrar's “Language and Languages."

represent the one object but something else. This we are able to effect by our powers of memory, even in cases where there exists no affinity whatever between the symbol and what it represents. Notice,

in passing, that such associative power, dependent on the memory, is possessed by the brutes as well as by ourselves, and that (as I hope to show more clearly later) our power differs from theirs solely in the fact that we are capable of using such symbols to represent that of which they have no apprehension. In a word, it is the distinctive characteristic of man that he can accept and use a finite symbol as the representative of an infinite idea.

As an example of symbolism, take the Egyptian hieroglyphics. In these, we are told, the object was indicated either by the direct figurative, pictorial, method, or indirectly by a symbol. Thus the picture of a man signified a man: but a serpent denoted not only a serpent, but also regal authority; a lion could be used as the symbol of Phtha or Vulcan, the element of fire.

Now, written language, or phonetic representation, is a very different thing from this pictorial method. But the process by which it was developed is similar. In this case we do not use a picture of the original object, but accept a certain symbol to represent a sound, which sound again is itself the representative of the original object.

How is this to be done? What kind of symbol

or picture can signify a sound? One method seems obvious.

If there is a name of an object which contains a marked characteristic sound, let us draw a picture of that object to represent that sound. Clemens of Alexandria tells us that the hieroglyphics are of two kinds: one kind is symbolic-this we have already discussed; the other "expresses its meaning by the first elements." Now the Greek word for "elements" means also "letters," and we know that some of the figures in these old Egyptian inscriptions do not stand as direct or symbolic pictures, but that they are meant to represent the initial sound of the name of the object that they depict, that, in fact, they are letters in our sense of the word-the first letters of the name of the thing depicted. To make this clearer, I will quote what a learned writer on the subject (M. Champollion) says. "The sound 'r' is represented in the names of the Roman emperors written in hieroglyphics, sometimes by a mouth (Coptic. Rô), sometimes by a tear (Rmeiê)." The names of these objects began with the sound which we now call "r," and consequently a picture ,"* of any one of these three things was adopted to

* In Egyptian the first phonetics were syllabic. Thus Osiris was denoted by a throne (os) and an eye (iri). Later the syllables were divided into their constituent sounds, corresponding with each separate movement of the organs of speech. But picturing and picture-writing continued to be used by them together with phonetics till a late date. The Phoenicians were probably the first who used an alphabet of true