Dear Comrade:
We have been tracing the development of written speech in order that we
might have a clearer understanding of our own language. We have found
how our earliest ancestors communicated with each other by signs and an
articulate speech that was probably a little better than that of some
animals of today. They gradually developed this articulate speech and
then began to have need for some form of written speech. That which
distinguishes man from the animals primarily is his power to remember
and to associate one idea with another. From this comes his ability to
reason concerning the connection of these ideas. Without this power of
associative memory we would not be able to reason. If you could not
recall the things that happened yesterday and had not the power of
imagination concerning the things that may happen tomorrow, your
reasoning concerning today would not be above that of the animals.
So man soon found it necessary to have some way of recalling accurately,
in a manner that he could depend upon, the things that happened
yesterday and the day before and still farther back in time. So that his
first step was the invention of simple aids to memory such as the
knotted strings and tally sticks. Then he began to draw pictures of the
objects about him which he could perceive by the five senses, the things
which he could see and hear and touch and taste and smell.
But man, the Thinker, began to develop and he began to have ideas about
things which he could not see and hear and touch and taste and smell. He
began to think of abstract ideas such as light and darkness, love and
hate, and if he was to have written speech he must have symbols which
would express these ideas. So we have found that he used pictures of the
things he perceived with his five senses to symbolize some of his
abstract ideas, as for example; a picture of the sun and moon to
represent light; the bee to symbolize industry; the ostrich feather to
represent justice. But as his ideas began to develop you can readily see
that in the course of time there were not enough symbols to go around
and this sort of written speech became very confusing and very difficult
to read.
Necessity is truly the mother of invention, and so this need of man
forced him to invent something entirely new--something which had been
undreamed of before. He began now to use pictures which were different
in sense but the names of which had the same sound. You can find an
example of this same thing on the Children's Puzzle Page in the rebus
which is given for the children to solve. As for example: A picture of
an eye, a saw, a boy, a swallow, a goose and a berry, and this would
stand for the sentence, I saw a boy swallow a gooseberry.
Perhaps you have used the same idea in some guessing game where a mill,
a walk and a key stands for Milwaukee. And so we have a new form of
picture writing. Notice in this that an entirely new idea has entered
in, for the picture may not stand for the whole word but may stand for
one syllable of the word as in the example given above. The mill stands
for one syllable, walk for another and key for another. This was a great
step for it meant the division of the word into various sounds
represented by the syllables.
What a new insight it gives us into life when we realize that not only
our bodies but the environment in which we live, the machines with which
we work and even the language which we use has been a product of man's
own effort. Man has developed these things for himself through a
constant and steady evolution. It makes us feel that we are part of one
stupendous whole; we belong to the class which has done the work of the
world and accomplished these mighty things. The same blood flows in us;
the same power belongs to us. Truly, with this idea, we can stand erect
and look the whole world in the face and demand the opportunity to live
our own lives to the full.
Yours for Freedom,