Dr, Darroch's Lecture on Chinese Writing An interesting Teeture on "The Characteristic's of Chinese Characters" was delivered by Rev. Darroch before the meeting of the Union Church Literary and Social Guild at Union Church Hall on Wednesday.
The lecturer stated that all writing in the beginning was symbolic and only became phonetic when mankind had progressed a con. siderable distance on the path of civilization, The eave men who made pictures on the bones of animals taken in the chase were the first to practice calligraphy. 'The Red Indian who makes a drawing with a piece of charted stick on a strip of birch-bark and expects his, aqua to understand the meaning of his drawing is taking the first stops im literature, 'AIL nations began their literary' efforts by making pictures of the things they wanted to fay. The Chinese atone, have not abandoned the pictogram for the phonetic alphabet, All other nations convey: their meaning by means of symbols. representing, sounds; the sounds form words and sentences and so. you have a written language. The: Chinese use pictograms, that is, pictures of the objects about which they wish to speak ideograms, that fs, pictures suggesting the ideas they wish to convey to the mind of the readers.
The earliest symbols were pict ures of such elementary objects as untutored man would wish to speak about. These, are the radicals of the language, the root words upon which the micro complicated pict-grams are built. So one has characters representing the sun, on, hand, eye, mouth, hi re, earth," ote,' 'These' a symbols. Pictures of the thing seen. Tu the courte of centuries they have been modified and simpli Dut by means of the great tionaries of the Chinese "language which show the ancient forms the original symbol can be, to a large extent, reproduced.
From pictures of things the early writers went on to make pictures representing ideas. These were symbols for "above," showing one thing above another. And for "below" which is just the former character reversed and so getting: one thing below another. ° Then came. the combination of existing symbols to indicate new ideas. Thus the pictures of the sun and moon which had become familiar through use. wore combined to indicate the iden of "brightness." These Leing the two brightest objects Jhown to man was very appro. symbol for "hand" was placed over the symbol for "eye" thus suggesting a man shading his eyes to see clearly and from the tio nouns was deduced the verb "to, see."
After this came the combination of two or more characters to set forth 2 complex iden single pictogram by itself could fully..delisicale, Thus, the modern!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.