"The origin and development of the} Chinese written characters" was the subject of the interesting address given by Dr. Even Morgan to members of the Shanghai Rotary Club ut the weekly tif n meeting at the Metropole Hotel on Thursday.
In Ins address, Dr. Morgan said:
Mr. Vinson Li suggested to me to) make a few observations on how the foreigner looks on the Chinese written character, In a way the answer is simple. He looks askance on it: Somewhat as the scribe looked on the wounded person on the road—he went by on the other side: as far away as possible it must be surmised. In book recently written by a visitor in Shanghai he makes the affirmation that there are old taipans here in Shanghai, who have been here 30) years, but who as yet know nothing of the speech or the visible spec of the country. It may be concludes that they nave no opinion to give on the written word.
But there are others who have some acquaintance with the language. Those who have endeavoured study. the language and have some knowledge of it may have been shocked when they met with the mass of strokes at first. But they went and traced one line after the other and by dint of practice and time and, 4 feat of memory they did manage to. {find a more or less permanent lodgement for many of these hieroglyphics in the mind. But in course of time the order and method in the con struction of the words became apparent and the beauty of the structure appeared. At first when the blind began to sce the impression as trees. It was first but after the eye brood~ over the complicated mass order gested to the hand to make a picture of what it saw the age of engineering} thad begun. These objects. already were called by names. What was Wanting was a visible representation. The first step in the process was a pictorial one. They made pictures of what they saw and knew by name.
The Chinese are lost in admiration of the Great Vu in his engineering works in draining the country. He carved a way through mountains and led the waters through deep channels. He was tanned by the sun and his hair was daily combes by the winds he encountered in his work." But he cleared the land and made the waste places fruitful for man, The pioneers of the early writing: those patient labourers in the study fof human speech and the 1001 attempts they made to find a way mutual communication are not for gotten, They smoothed out a path for man to cross distances and communicate with each. other. In this way, as Mr. Gilbert Murray says. they raised the path of civilization little above the mud of existence.
Who then did this pioneer work] and when was it done. As these are unknown, tradition has invented a few stories and fictitious ideas to account for the marvellous accomplishment. There is the tradition of the horse and the map thrown up from the river: there Is the story of Li Shih and the tortoise. He saw the Hines on the back of the tortoise and these suggested the making of lines to form words. But these two instances only refer to the pa kus, the Diagrams. The other tradition is that man walking through a forest was struck by the marks made by birds on the ground. But whatever was! the source and whoever was the first to discover a method, whether it was don gineering is used In the great engineering feat
arranging and. contriving and inventing"—not in the feal sense. Very clever engineer! have been' at work. They have invented 40,000 visible signs to five Permanence to the fleeting sound of thought and speech and transmit Ideas from the distant past til the present and on to the more distant future: and not only in time but through every part of the known world and perhaps later on through even undiscovered folds.
This was a momentous dis for the human race. It moi written language possible. It added to the cultural wealth of nations and, Is a foremost instrument in the civilzation of the world.
The structure of this instrument contains matter of great value, The process of ils evolution is a study full of interest. "Just think of st, The simple word window with which we are so familiar and the thousands of them we see every day. What imagitation, what poetry went into the mantifacture of that word—window. Tt comes into English from the Old Norse vindauga the eye of thal wind, What figure we may conjure up for ourselves the next time we Took at a window. That, simple example will help us to think of the old minds of China, that have di appeared long years ago, as they {ried to make visible speech for their people, The script adds immensely {o the influence of man. It may be Negro_or Latin or Chinese or Engish, The more the extension the mote the practical value. Here this land there is the greatest extension of all. Four or five hundred million people with 40,000 words ut command to express all their thoughts and ideas and with a flexble script that can manufacture new words at any time as they do to-day in the scientific world, Visible Speech Animals share with men the mowat of making sounds but the mind of man alone can shape his sound thought and ideas into words. And when he discovered a way of making'
Tecord of these in a visible form another great step in advance. He truly becomes the head of creation as the Chinese When the visible speech is made then it becomes possible to have books and libraries. As there are warehouses for grain for the body there comes into existence the storehouses. to furnish the mind. The path of progress are open. There 's an inimitable possibility before the race. The gift of speech is @ natural endowment, There has been training fand development. But it has been left to human Ingenuity to find a way for visible speech. This is the general way. Something is given by endowment: the rest has to be won by thought and effort writing we see the mind express sing itself in visible forms. It suggested ways and the hand responded. They kept step. When the mind sug-
Fu Hsi or some one else a beginning had been made and i 2 visit speech was an accomplished fact.
But the achievement was in danger: the writing was in peril. A standard) was needed. An authority on the correct way was needed. So the frst dictionary was made. This is the well known Shuo Wen, This is a valuable contribution for stabilizing th written word and preserving the uni formity of the picture and the purity of the character. It has been used] in the writing of some of these! characters to-day.
The characters that we have now must be remembered started wita the picture of some concrete object. These are the foundation of the written form of the language we have to-day. There are many ways of writing the same word. The old seal form, the standard form and the grass form and the running form. The standard form Is the one most generally used in printing books and Im learning the language by foreigners. It is necessary to know some thing of the running hand as most of the letters and correspondence is done in that. That are certain gen-feral rules but each individual is fond of making his own way in forming the words.
The-whole of the written language]
divided into what is called the six Scripts. These are the Pictori Indicative, of action or state, Com* bined Ideas or Suggestive Compounds, the Phonetic, then we have the Con-tranes by inverting and reversing the character which has been called Anti-telic, and lastly Borrowed Figures or the Metaphorical There six come in pairs. The 1st and 2nd form one class: the 3rd and 4h another and the Sth and 6th the last. They get more complex as hey proceed.
few words may be said on each.
is easy to understand the Pictori This class contains line repressentation of concrete things. The sun is represented by a circle. The moon is represented as the crescent of horned moon. Pictures of the eye, jeer, mouth mountain, river, child. man. Man in the first picture made, jis not what Carlyle calls a forked radish but he is represented as a straight body with two arms and a round head. The pictorial of concrete is a class by itself and is the {foundation of all the other forms. [Progress in the art was based on the pictorial.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.