THE SPREAD OF THE ALPHABET
130. Kinds of writing: pictographic and mixed phonetic.—131.
Deficiencies of transitional systems.—132. Abbreviation
and conventionalization.—133. Presumptive origins of
transitional systems.—134. Phonetic writing: the primitive
Semitic alphabet.—135. The Greek alphabet: invention of
the vowels.—136. Slowness of the invention.—137. The Roman
alphabet.—138. Letters as numeral signs.—139. Reform in
institutions.—140. The sixth and seventh letters.—141. The
tail of the alphabet.—142. Capitals and minuscules.—143.
Conservatism and rationalization.—144. Gothic.—145. Hebrew and
Arabic.—146. The spread eastward: the writing of India.—147.
Syllabic tendencies.—148. The East Indies: Philippine
alphabets.—149. Northern Asia: the conflict of systems in Korea.
130. KINDS OF WRITING: PICTOGRAPHIC AND MIXED PHONETIC
Three stages are logically distinguishable in the development of writing.
The first is the use of pictures of things and symbols of ideas: the
pictographic method. In the second stage the representation of sounds
begins, but is made through pictures or abbreviations of pictures: and
pictures or ideographs as such continue to be used alongside the pictures
whose value is phonetic. This may be called the mixed or transitional
or rebus stage. Third is the phonetic phase. In this, the symbols used,
whatever their origin may have been, no longer denote objects or ideas
but are merely signs for sounds—words, syllables, or the elemental
letter-sounds.
The first of these stages, the pictographic, and the degree to which it
flows, or rather fails to flow spontaneously out of the human mind, have
already been discussed (§ 105). The second or transitional stage makes
use of the principle that pictures may either be interpreted directly as
pictures or can be named. A picture or suggestive sketch of the organ
of sight may stand for the thing itself, the eye. Or, the emphasis may
be on the word eye, its sound; then the picture can be made with the
purpose of representing that sound when it has a different meaning, as in
the pronoun “I.” The method is familiar to us in the form of the game
which we call “rebus,” that is, a method of writing “with things” or
pictures of objects. The insect bee stands for the abstract verb “be,”
two strokes or the figure 2 for the preposition “to,” a picture of a
house with the sign of a tavern, that is an inn, for the prefix “in-,”
and so on. This charade-like method is cumbersome and indirect enough to
provide the difficulty of interpretation that makes it fit for a game or
puzzle. But what to us, who have a system of writing, is a mere sport or
occasional toy, is also the method by which peoples without writing other
than pure pictography made their first steps toward the writing of words
and sounds. The principle of reading the name instead of the idea of the
thing pictured is therefore a most important invention. It made possible
the writing of pronouns, prepositions, prefixes and suffixes, grammatical
endings, articles, and the like, which are incapable of representation by
pictography alone. There is no difficulty drawing a recognizable picture
of a man, and two or three such pictures might give the idea of men. But
no picture system can express the difference between “a man” and “the
man.” Nor can relational or abstract ideas like those of “here,” “that,”
“by,” “of,” “you,” “why,” be expressed by pictures.
131. DEFICIENCIES OF TRANSITIONAL SYSTEMS
Important as the invention of the designation of words or sounds
therefore was, it was at first hesitant, cumbersome, and incomplete
as compared with modern alphabets. For one thing, many symbols were
required. They had to be pictured with some accuracy to be recognizable.
A picture of a bee must be made with some detail and care to be
distinguishable with certainty from that of a fly or wasp or beetle. An
inn must be drawn with its sign or shield or some clear identifying mark,
else it is likely to be read as house or barn or hut or shop. The figure
of the human eye is a more elaborate character than the letter I. Then,
too, the old pictures did not go out of use. When the writing referred to
bees and inns and eyes, pictures of these things were written and read as
pictures. The result was that a picture of an eye would in one passage
stand for the organ and in another for the personal pronoun. Which its
meaning was, had to be guessed from the context. If the interpretation
as pronoun fitted best—for instance, if the next characters meant “tell
you”—that interpretation was chosen; but if the next word were recognized
to be “brow,” or “wink,” the character would be interpreted as denoting
the sense organ. That is, the same characters were sometimes read by
their sense and sometimes by their sound, once pictographically and once
phonetically. Hence the system was really transitional or mixed, whereas
a true alphabet, which represents sounds only, is unmixed or pure in
principle. Owing to the paucity of sound signs at first, the object or
idea signs had to be retained; after they were once well established,
they continued to be kept alongside the sound signs even after these had
grown numerous. The tenacity of most mixed systems is remarkable. The
Egyptians early added word signs and then syllable and pure letter signs
to their object signs. After they had evolved a set of letter signs for
the principal sounds of their language, they might perfectly well have
discarded all the rest of their hundreds of characters. But for three
thousand years they clung to these, and wrote pictographic and phonetic
characters jumbled together. They would even duplicate to make sure: as
if we should write e-y-e and then follow with a picture of an eye, for
fear, as it were, that the spelling out was not sufficiently clear. From
our modern point of view it seems at first quite extraordinary that they
should have continued to follow this plan a thousand years after nations
with whom they were in contact, Phœnicians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans,
were using simple, brief, accurate, pure alphabets. Yet of course they
were only following the grooves of crystallized habit, as when we write
“weight” or “piece” with unnecessary letters, or employ a combination of
two simple letters each having its own value, like T and H, to represent
a third simple sound, that of TH. With us, as it was with the Egyptians,
it would be more of a wrench and effort for the adult generation to
change to new and simpler characters or methods than to continue in the
old cumbersome habits. So the advantage of the next generation is stifled
and the established awkward system goes on indefinitely.
132. ABBREVIATION AND CONVENTIONALIZATION
This mixture of pictographic and ideographic with phonetic characters,
and its long retention, were substantially as characteristic of Sumerian
or Babylonian Cuneiform, of Chinese, and of Maya and Aztec writing, as
of Egyptian. In all of these systems there was more or less tendency to
abbreviate the pictures, to contract them to a few strokes, to reduce
the original representations to conventional characters. Cuneiform and
presumably Chinese underwent this process early and profoundly. In
Egyptian it also set in and led to Hieratic and later to Demotic cursive
script, which consist of signs that are meaningless to the eye, although
they resolve into standardized reductions of the pictures which during
the same period continued to be made in the monumental and religious
Hieroglyphic. Such conventional abbreviations made possible a certain
speed of production, rendered writing of use in business and daily
life, and thereby contributed to the spread of literacy. In themselves,
however, they introduced no new principle.
In addition to this conventionality of form of characters, there is to be
distinguished also a conventionalization of meaning which is inherent in
the nature of writing. Conventionalization of form accompanies frequency
or rapidity of writing, conventionalization of meaning must occur if
there is to be any writing at all. It develops in pure non-phonetic
pictography if this is to be able to express any considerable range
of meaning. An outstretched hand may well be used with the sense of
“give.” But the beholder of the picture-writing is likely to interpret
it as “take.” Here is where conventionalization is necessary: it must be
understood by writers and readers alike that such a hand means “give” and
not “take,” or perhaps the reverse, or perhaps that if the palm is up
and the fingers flat the meaning is “give” whereas the palm below or the
fingers half closed means “take.” Whatever the choice, it must be adhered
to; the standardized, conventional element has entered. That is why one
customarily speaks of “systems” of writing. Without the system, there can
be not even picture-writing, but only pictures, whose range of power of
communication is far more limited.
When the phonetic phase begins to be entered, conventionalization of
meaning is even more important. An inn must be distinguished from a house
by its shield, a house from a barn by its chimney, and so on. The shield
will perhaps have to be exaggerated to be visible at all, be heart-shaped
or circular to distinguish it from windows; and so forth. So with the
phonetic values. A syllable like English “per” might be represented by
one scribe by means of a cat with a wavy line issuing from its mouth to
denote its _purr_; by another by a _pear_; by a third, by something that
habitually came as a _pair_, such as earrings. Any of these combined
with a “sieve” symbol would approximately render the work “per-ceive.”
But some one else might hit upon the combination of a _purse_ and the
setting sun at _eve_. Obviously there has got to be a concordance of
method if any one but the writer is to read his inscription readily. This
correspondence of representation and interpretation is precisely what
constitutes a set of figures into a system of writing instead of a puzzle.
133. PRESUMPTIVE ORIGINS OF MIXED SYSTEMS
For such a set concordance to grow up among all the diverse classes
of one large nation would be very difficult. In fact, it seems that
transitional systems of writing have originated among small groups with
common business or purpose, whose members were in touch with one another,
and perhaps sufficiently provided with leisure to experiment: colleges of
priests, government archivists, possibly merchants with accounts. It is
also clear that any system must reflect the culture of the people among
whom it originates. The ancient Egyptians had no inns nor purses, but did
have horned serpents and owls. Still more determining is the influence
of the language itself, as soon as writing attempts to be phonetic. The
words expressing pair and sieve are obviously something else in Egyptian
than in English, so that if these signs were used, their sound value
would be quite otherwise. Yet once a system has crystallized, there
is nothing to prevent a new nationality from taking it over bodily.
The picture values of the signs can be wholly disregarded and their
sounds read for words of a different meaning; or the sounds could be
disregarded, or the original proper forms of the characters be pretty
well obliterated, but their idea value carried over into the other
tongue. Thus the Semitic Babylonians took the Cuneiform writing from the
Sumerians, whose speech was distinct.
It is also well to distinguish between such cases of the whole or most
of a system being taken over bodily, and other instances in which one
people may have derived the generic idea of the method of writing from
another and then worked out a system of its own. Thus it is hard not
to believe in some sort of connection of stimulus between Egyptian and
Cuneiform writing because they originated in the same part of the world
almost simultaneously. Yet both the forms of the characters and their
meaning and sound values differ so thoroughly in Egyptian and Cuneiform
that no specific connection between them has been demonstrated, and it
seems unlikely that one is a modified derivative form of the other.
So with the hieroglyphs of the Hittites and Cretans. They appeared in
near-by regions somewhat later. Consequently, although their forms are
distinctive and, so far as can be judged without our being able to read
these systems, their values also, it would be dogmatic to assert that
the development of these two writings took place without any stimulation
from Egyptian or Cuneiform. Something of a similar argument would perhaps
apply even to Chinese (§ 251), though on this point extreme caution is
necessary. Accordingly if one thinks of the invention of the first idea
of part-phonetic writing, it is conceivable that all the ancient systems
of the Old World derive from a single such invention; although even
in that event the Maya-Aztec system would remain as a wholly separate
growth. If on the other hand one has in mind the content and specific
manner of systems of the transitional type, Egyptian, Cuneiform, and
Chinese, perhaps also Cretan and Hittite, are certainly distinct and
constitute so many instances of parallelism. Even greater is the number
of independent starts if one considers pure pictographic systems, since
tolerable beginnings of this type were made by the Indians of the United
States, who never even attempted sound representations.
134. PHONETIC WRITING: THE PRIMITIVE SEMITIC ALPHABET
The last basic invention was that of purely phonetic writing—the
expressing only of sounds, without admixture of pictures or symbols.
Perhaps the most significant fact about this method as distinguished from
earlier forms of writing is that it was invented only once in history.
All the alphabetic systems which now prevail in nearly every part of
the earth—Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Indian, as well as many that
have become extinct—can be traced back to a single source. The story
in this case is therefore one of diffusion and modification instead of
parallelism.
What circumstance it was that caused this all-important invention to be
made, is not known, unfortunately, though time may yet bring knowledge.
There is even division of opinion as to the particular system of mixed
writing that was drawn upon by the first devisers of the alphabet, or
that served as jumping off place for the invention. Some have looked to
the Egyptian system, others to a Cuneiform or Cretan or Hittite source
of inspiration. Nor is it wholly clear who were the precise people
responsible for the invention. It is only certain that about 1,000
B.C., or a little earlier, some Semitic people of western Asia, in the
region of the Hebrews and Phœnicians, probably the latter themselves,
began to use a set of twenty-two non-pictorial characters that stood for
nothing but sounds. Moreover, they represented the sounds of Semitic with
sufficient accuracy for anything in the language to be written and read
without trouble. These twenty-two letters look simple and insignificant
alongside the numerous, beautiful, and interesting Egyptian hieroglyphs.
But on them is based every form of alphabet ever used by humanity.
The earliest extant example of the primitive Semitic alphabet[22] is on
the famous Moabite Stone of King Mesha, who in the ninth century before
Christ erected and inscribed this monument to commemorate the successful
defense of Moab against the invading Hebrews. Now Moab was a little and
rude country, somewhat off the roads of commerce and civilization. It
is hardly likely, therefore, that the Moabites were the inventors of
the alphabet. It is much more probable that the system was perfected,
perhaps several centuries earlier, by a wealthier and more important
people, one more in contact with foreign nations, such as the Phœnicians,
and that from them it spread to their neighbors, the Hebrews, Moabites,
and Aramæans of Syria. This spread must have been facilitated by the
close kinship of the speech of these nations, enabling any of them to
adopt the alphabet of another without material modification.
The Phœnicians founded Carthage, and consequently the Carthaginian or
Punic writing until after the extinction of the great trading city was
also Phœnician.
135. THE GREEK ALPHABET: INVENTION OF THE VOWELS
More important was the spread of the Phœnician letters to an entirely
foreign people, the Greeks, whose language was largely composed of
different sounds and possessed a genius distinct from that of the
Semitic tongues. The Greeks’ own traditions attest that they took
over their alphabet from the Phœnicians. The fact of the transmission
is corroborated by the form of the letters and by their order in the
alphabet. It is also proved very prettily by the names of the letters.
As we speak of the ABC, the Greeks spoke of the Alpha Beta—whence our
word “alphabet.” Now “alpha” and “beta” mean nothing in Greek. They are
obviously foreign names. In the Semitic languages, however, similar
names, Aleph and Beth, were used for the same letters A and B, and meant
respectively “ox” and “house.” Evidently these names were applied by the
Semites because they employed the picture of an ox head to represent
the first sound in the word Aleph, and the representation of a house to
represent the sound of B in Beth. Or possibly the letters originated in
some other way, and then, names for them being felt to be desirable, and
the shape of the first rudely suggesting the outline of an ox’s head and
the second a house, these names were applied to the characters already in
use.
The third letter of the alphabet, corresponding in place to our C and
in sound to our G, the Greeks called Gamma, which is as meaningless as
their Alpha and Beta. It is their corruption of Semitic Gimel, which
means “camel” and may bear this name because of its resemblance to the
head and neck of a camel. The same sort of correspondence can be traced
through most of the remaining letters. From these names alone, then,
even if nothing else were known about the early alphabets, it would be
possible to prove the correctness of the Greek legend that they derived
their letters from the Phœnicians. A people who themselves invented
an alphabet would obviously name the letters with words in their own
language, and not with meaningless syllables taken from a foreign speech.
The Greeks however did more than take over the alphabet from the
Phœnicians. They improved it. An outstanding peculiarity of Semitic
writing was that it dispensed with vowels. It represented the consonants
fully and accurately, in fact had carefully devised letters for a number
of breath and guttural sounds which European languages either do not
contain or generally neglect to recognize. But, as if to compensate, the
Semitic languages possess the distinctive trait of a great variability of
vowels. When a verb is conjugated, when it is converted into a noun, and
in other circumstances, the vowels change, only the consonants remaining
the same, much as in English “sing” becomes “sang” in the past and
“goose” changes to “geese” in the plural. Only, in English such changes
are comparatively few, whereas in Semitic they are the overwhelming rule
and quite intricate. The result of this fluidity of the vowels was that
when the Semites invented their letters they renounced the attempt to
write the vowels. Apparently they felt the consonants, the only permanent
portions of their words, as a sort of skeleton, sufficient for an
unmistakable outline. So, with their ordinary consonants, plus letters
for J and V which at need could be made to stand for I and U, and the
consistent employment of breaths and stops to indicate the presence or
absence of vowels at the beginning and end of words, they managed to make
their writing readily legible. It was as if we should write: _’n Gd w’
trst_ or _Ths wy ’t_. Even to-day the Bible is written and read in the
Jewish synagogue by this vowelless system of three thousand years ago.
In the Greek language more confusion would have been caused by this
system. Moreover, the alphabet came to the Greeks as something
extraneous, so that they were not under the same temptation as the
Phœnicians to follow wholly in the footsteps of the first generation of
inventors. As a result, the Greeks took the novel step of adding vowel
letters.
It is significant that what the Greeks did was not to make the new vowel
signs out of whole cloth, as it were, out of nothing, but that they
followed the method which is characteristic of invention in general.
They took over the existing system, twisted and stretched it as far as
they could, and created outright only when they were forced to. While
the Phœnician alphabet lacked vowel signs, the Greeks felt that it had
a superfluity of signs for breaths and stops. So they transformed the
Semitic breaths and stops into vowels. Thus they satisfied the needs of
their language; and incidentally added the capstone to the alphabet.
It was the first time that a system of writing had been brought on the
complete basis of a letter for every sound. All subsequent European
alphabets are merely modifications of the Greek one.
The first of the Semitic letters, the Aleph, stood for the glottal stop,
a check or closure of the glottis in which the vocal cords are situated;
a sound that occurs, although feebly, between the two o’s in “coördinate”
when one articulates distinctly. In the Semitic languages this glottal
stop is frequent, vigorous, and etymologically important, wherefore the
Semites treated it like any other consonant. The Greeks gave it a new
value, that of the vowel A. Similarly they transformed the value of the
symbols for two breath sounds, a mild and a harsh H, into short and long
E, which they called Epsilon and Eta. Their O is made over from a Semitic
guttural letter, while for I the Semitic ambiguous J-I was ready to hand.
U, written Y by the Greeks, is a dissimilated variant of F, both being
derived from Semitic Vau or the sixth letter with the value of V or U.
The vocalic form was now put at the end of the alphabet, which previously
had ended with T. Its consonantal double, F, later went out of use in
Greek speech and was dropped from the alphabet.
136. SLOWNESS OF THE INVENTION
The Greeks did not make these alterations of value all at once. The
value of several of the letters fluctuated in the different parts of
Greece for two or three centuries. In one city a certain value or form
of a letter would come into usage; in another, the same letter would be
shaped differently, or stand for a consonant instead of a vowel. Thus the
character H was long read by some of the Greeks as H, by others as long
E. This fact illustrates the principle that the Greek alphabet was not
an invention which leaped, complete and perfect, out of the brain of an
individual genius, as inventions do in film plays and romantic novels,
and as the popular mind, with its instinct for the dramatic, likes to
believe. One might imagine that with the basic plan of the alphabet, and
the majority of its symbols, provided ready-made by the Phœnicians, it
would have been a simple matter for a single Greek to add the finishing
touches and so shape his national system of writing as it has come down
to us. In fact, however, these little finishing touches were several
centuries in the making; the final result was a compromise between
all sorts of experiments and beginnings. One can picture an entire
nationality literally groping for generation after generation, and only
slowly settling on the ultimate system. There must have been dozens of
innovators who tried their hand at a modification of the value or form of
a letter.
Nor can it be denied that what was new in the Greek alphabet was a
true invention. The step of introducing full vowel characters was as
definitely original and almost as important as any new progress in
the history of civilization. Yet it is not even known who the first
individual was that tried to apply this idea. Tradition is silent on the
point. It is quite conceivable that the first writing of vowels may have
been independently attempted by a number of individuals in different
parts of Greece.
137. THE ROMAN ALPHABET
The Roman alphabet was derived from the Greek. But it is clear that it
was not taken from the Greek alphabet after this had reached its final or
classic form. If such had been the case, the Roman letters, such as we
still use them, would undoubtedly be more similar to the Greek ones than
they are, and certain discrepancies in the values of the letters, as well
as in their order, would not have occurred. In the old days of writing,
when a number of competing forms of the alphabet still flourished in the
several Greek cities, one of these forms, developed at Chalcis on Eubœa
and allied on the whole to those of the Western Hellenic world, was
carried to Italy. There, after a further course of local diversification,
one of its subvarieties became fixed in the usage of the inhabitants of
the city of Rome. Now the Romans at this period still pronounced the
sound H, which later became feeble in the Latin tongue and finally died
out. On the other hand the distinction between short and long (or close
and open) E, which the Greeks after many experiments came to recognize as
important in their speech, was of no great moment in Latin. The result
was that whereas classic Greek turned both the Semitic H’s into E’s,
Latin accepted only the first of these modifications, that one affecting
the fifth letter of the alphabet, whereas the other H, occupying the
eighth place in the alphabetic series, continued to be used by the
Romans with approximately its original Semitic value. This retention,
however, was possible because Greek writing was still in a transitional,
vacillating stage when it reached the Romans. The Western Greek form
of the alphabet that was carried to Italy was still using the eighth
letter as an H; so that the Romans were merely following their teachers.
Had they based their letters on the “classic” Greek alphabet which was
standardized a few hundred years later, the eighth as well as the fifth
letter would have come to them with its vowel value crystallized. In that
case the Romans would either have dispensed altogether with writing H, or
would have invented a totally new sign for it and probably tacked it on
to the end of the alphabet, as both they and the Greeks did in the case
of several other letters.
The net result is the curious one that whereas the Roman alphabet is
derived from the Greek, and therefore subsequent, it remains, in this
particular matter of the eighth letter, nearer to the original Semitic
alphabet.
There are other letters in the Roman alphabet which corroborate the fact
of its being modeled on a system of the period when Greek writing still
remained under the direct influence of Phœnician. The Semitic languages
possessed two K sounds, usually called Kaph and Koph, or K and Q, of
which the former was pronounced much like our K and the latter farther
back toward the throat. The Greeks not having both these sounds kept the
letter Kaph, which they called Kappa, and gradually discarded Koph or
Koppa. Yet before its meaning had become entirely lost, they had carried
it to Italy. There the Romans seized upon it to designate a variety of K
which the Greek dialects did not possess, namely KW; which is of course
the phonetic value which the symbol Q still has in English. The Romans
were reasonable in this procedure, for in early Latin the Q was produced
with the extreme rear of the tongue, much like the original Koph.
138. LETTERS AS NUMERAL SIGNS
In later Greek, Koph remained only as a curious survival. Although not
used as a letter, it was a number symbol. None of the ancients possessed
pure numeral symbols of the type of our “Arabic” ones. The Semites and
the Greeks employed the letters of the alphabet for this purpose, each
letter having a numeral value dependent on its place in the alphabet.
Thus A stood for 1, B for 2, C or Gamma for 3, F for 6, I for 10, K for
20 and so on. As this series became established, Q as a numeral denoted
90; the Greeks, long after they had ceased writing Q as a letter, used
it with this arithmetical value. Once it had acquired a place in the
series, it would have been far too confusing to drop. With Q omitted, R
would have had to be shifted in its value from 100 to 90. One man would
have continued to use R with its old value, while his more new-fashioned
neighbor or son would have written it to denote ten less. Arithmetic
would have been as thoroughly wrecked as if we should decide to drop out
the figure 5 and write 6 whenever we meant 5, 7 to express 6, and so on.
Habit in such cases is insuperable. No matter how awkward an established
system becomes, it normally remains more practical to retain with its
deficiencies than to replace by a better scheme. The wrench and cost of
reformation are greater, or are felt to be greater by each generation,
than the advantages to be gained.
139. REFORM IN INSTITUTIONS
This is one reason why radical changes are so difficult to bring about
in institutions. These are social and therefore in a sense arbitrary.
In mechanical or “practical” matters people adjust themselves to the
pressure of new conditions more quickly. If a nation has been in the
habit of wearing clothing of wool, and this material becomes scarce and
expensive, some attempt will indeed be made to increase the supply of
wool, but if production fails to keep pace with the deficiency, cotton
is substituted with little reluctance. If, on the other hand, a calendar
becomes antiquated, which could be changed by a simple act of will,
by the mere exercise of community reason, a tremendous resistance is
encountered. Time and again nations have gone on with an antiquated or
cumbersome calendar long after any mediocre mathematician or astronomer
could have devised a better one. It is usually reserved for an autocratic
potentate of undisputed authority, a Cæsar or a Pope, or for a cataclysm
like the French and Russian revolutions, to institute the needed reform.
As long as men are concerned with their bodily wants, those which they
share with the lower animals, they appear sensible and adaptable. In
proportion however as the alleged products of their intellects are
involved, when one might most expect foresight and reason and cool
calculation to be influential, societies seem swayed by a conservatism
and stubbornness the strength of which looms greater as we examine
history more deeply.
Of course, each nation and generation regards itself as the one
exception. But irrationality is as easy to discern in modern institutions
as in ancient alphabets, if one has a mind to see it. Daylight saving
is an example very near home. For centuries the peoples of western
civilization have gradually got out of bed, breakfasted, worked, dined,
and gone to sleep later and later, until the middle of their waking
day came at about two or three o’clock instead of noon. The beginning
of the natural day was being spent in sleep, most relaxation taken at
night. This was not from deliberate preference, but from a species of
procrastination of which the majority were unintentionally guilty.
Finally the wastefulness of the condition became evident. Every one
was actually paying money for illumination which enabled him to sit in
a room while he might have been amusing himself gratis outdoors. Really
rational beings would have changed their habits—blown the factory whistle
at seven instead of eight, opened the office at eight instead of nine,
gone to the theater at seven and to bed at ten. But the herd impulse was
too strong. The individual that departed from the custom of the mass
would have been made to suffer. The first theater opening at seven would
have played to empty chairs. The office closing at four would have lost
the business of the last hour of the day without compensation from the
empty hour prefixed at the beginning. The only way out was for every one
to agree to a self-imposed fiction. So the nations that prided themselves
most on their intelligence solemnly enacted that all clocks be set ahead.
Next morning, every one had cheated himself into an hour of additional
daylight, and the illuminating plant out of an hour of revenue, without
any one having had to depart from established custom; which last was
evidently the course actually to be avoided at all hazards.
Of course, most individual men and women are neither idiotic nor
insane. The only conclusion is that as soon and as long as people live
in relations and act in groups, something wholly irrational is imposed
on them, something that is inherent in the very nature of society and
civilization. There appears to be little or nothing that the individual
can do in regard to this force except to refrain from adding to its
irrationality the delusion that it is rational.
140. THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH LETTERS
The letters, such as Q, in which the Roman alphabet is in agreement
with the original Semitic one and differs from classic Greek writing,
might lead, if taken by themselves, to the conjecture that the ancient
Italians had perhaps not derived their alphabet via the Greeks at all,
but directly from the Phœnicians. But this conclusion is untenable:
first, because the forms of the earliest Latin and Greek letters are on
the whole more similar to each other than to the contemporaneous Semitic
forms; and second because of the deviations from the Semitic prototype
which the Latin and Greek systems share with each other, as in the vowels.
The sixth letter of the Roman alphabet, F, the Semitic Waw or Vau,
is wanting in classic Greek, although retained in certain early and
provincial dialects. One of the brilliant discoveries of classical
philology was that the speech in which the Homeric poems were originally
composed still possessed this sound, numerous irregularities of scansion
being explainable only on the basis of its original presence. The letter
for it looked like two Greek G’s, one set on top of the other. Hence,
later when it had long gone out of use except as a numeral, it was called
Di-gamma or “double-G.”
The seventh Semitic letter, which in Greek finally became the sixth on
account of the loss of the Vau or Digamma, was Zayin, Greek Zeta, our
Z. This, in turn, the Romans omitted, because their language lacked
the sound. They filled its place with G, which in Phœnician and Greek
came in third position. The shift came about thus. The earliest Italic
writing followed the Semitic and Greek original and had C, pronounced
G, as its third letter. But in Etruscan the sounds K and G were hardly
distinguished. K therefore went out of use; and the early Romans followed
the precedent of their cultured and influential Etruscan neighbors.
For a time, therefore, the single character C was employed for both
G and K in Latin. Finally, about the third century before Christ, a
differentiation being found desirable, the C was written as C when it
stood for the “hard” or voiceless sound K, but with a small stroke, as
G, when it represented the soft or voiced sound; and, the seventh place
in the alphabet, that of Z, being vacant, this modified character was
inserted. Thus original C, pronounced G, was split by the Latins into two
similar letters, one retaining the shape and place in the alphabet of
Gimel-Gamma, the other retaining the sound of Gamma but displacing Zeta.
But the letter Z did not remain permanently eliminated from western
writing. As long as the Romans continued rude and self-sufficient, they
had no need of a character for a sound which they did not speak. When
they became powerful, expanded, touched Greek civilization, and borrowed
from this its literature, philosophy, and arts, they took over also
many Greek names and words. As Z occurred in these, they adopted the
character. Yet to have put it in its original seventh place which was
now occupied by G, would have disturbed the position of the following
letters. It was obviously more convenient to hang this once rejected and
now reinstated character on at the end of the alphabet; and there it is
now.
141. THE TAIL OF THE ALPHABET
In fact, the last six letters of our alphabet are additions of this sort.
The original Semitic alphabet ended with T. U was differentiated by the
Greeks from F to provide for one of their vowel sounds. This addition was
made at an early enough period to be communicated to the Romans. This
nation wrote U both for the vowel U and the consonantal or semi-vowel
sound of our W. To be exact, they did not write U at all, but what we
should call V, pronouncing it sometimes U and sometimes W. They spelled
_cvm_, not _cum_.
Later, they added X. An old Semitic S-sound, in fifteenth place in the
alphabet and distinct from the S in twenty-first position which is the
original of our S, was used for both SS and KS. In classic Greek, one
form, with KS value, maintained itself in its original place. In other
early Græco-Italic alphabets, the second form, with SS value, kept
fifteenth place and the X or KS variant was put at the end, after U.
The SS letter later dropped out because it was not distinguished in
pronunciation from S.
The Y that follows X is intrinsically nothing but the U which the Romans
already had—a sort of double of it. The Greek U however was pronounced
differently from the Latin one—like French U or German ü. The literary
Roman felt that he could not adequately represent it in Greek words by
his own U. He therefore took over the U as the Greeks wrote it—that is, a
reduced V on top of a vertical stroke. This character naturally came to
be known as Greek U; and in modern French Y is not simply called “Y,” as
in English, but “Y-grec,” that is, “Greek Y.”
With Z added to U (V), X, and Y, the ancient Roman alphabet was completed.
Our modern Roman alphabet is however still fuller. The two values which
V had in Latin, that of the vowel U and the semi-vowel W, are so similar
that no particular hardship was caused through their representation by
the one character. But in the development of Latin from the classic
period to mediæval times, the semi-vowel sound W came to be pronounced
as the consonant V as we speak it in English. This change occurred both
in Latin in its survival as a religious and literary tongue, and in the
popularly spoken Romance languages, like French and Italian, that sprang
out of Latin. Finally it was felt that the full vowel U and the pure
consonant V were so different that separate letters for them would be
convenient. The two forms with rounded and pointed bottom were already
actually in use as mere calligraphic variants, although not distinguished
in sound, V being usually written at the beginning of words, U in the
middle. Not until after the tenth century did the custom slowly and
undesignedly take root of using the pointed letter exclusively for the
consonant, which happened to come most frequently at the head of words,
and the rounded letter for the vowel which was commoner medially.
In the same way I and J were originally one letter. In the original
Semitic this stood for the semi-vowel J (or “Y” as in yet); in Greek
for the vowel I; in Latin indifferently for vowel or semi-vowel, as in
Ianuarius. Later, however, in English, French, and Spanish speech, the
semi-vowel became a consonant just as V had become. When differentiation
between I as vowel and as consonant seemed necessary, it was effected
by seizing upon a distinction in form which had originated merely as a
calligraphic flourish. About the fifteenth century, I was given a round
turn to the left, when at the beginning of words, as an ornamental
initial. The distinction in sound value came still later. The forms
I and J were kept together in the alphabet, as U and V had been, the
juxtaposition serving as a memento of their recency of distinction—like
the useless dot over small j. Had the people of the Middle Ages still
been using the letters of the alphabet for numerical figures as did the
Greeks, they would undoubtedly have found it more convenient to keep
the order of the old letters intact. J and U would in that case almost
certainly have been put at the end of the alphabet instead of adjacent to
I and V.
J presents a survival—a significant anachronism. Although now recognized
in the alphabet, the letter is not always accorded its full place in the
series; now and then it is treated like an adopted child whose position
in the family is somewhat subsidiary. When a continental European uses
letters to designate rows of chairs in a theater, paragraph headings in a
book, a series of shipping marks, or any other listing, he often omits J,
passing directly from I to K as a Roman of two thousand years ago would
have done. Americans occasionally do the same: in Washington, K street
follows directly on I street. If asked the reason, we perhaps rationalize
the omission on the ground that I and J look so much alike that they run
risk of being confused. Yet it scarcely occurs to us that I and L, or I
and T, can also be easily confused. The true cause of the habit seems to
be the unconscious one that our ancestors, in using the letters seriatim,
followed I by K because they had no J.
The origin of W is accounted for by its name, “Double-U,” and by its
form, which is that of two V’s. The old Latin pronunciation of V
gradually changed from W to V, and many of the later European languages
either contained no W-sound or indicated it by the device of writing U
or some combination into which U entered. Thus the French write OU and
the Spanish HU for the sound of W. In English, however, and in a few
other European languages, the semi-vowel sound was important enough to
make a less circumstantial representation advisable. Since the sound of
the semi-vowel was felt to be fuller than that of the consonant, a new
letter was coined for the former by coupling together two of the latter.
This innovation did not begin to creep into English until the eleventh
century. Being an outgrowth of U and V, W was inserted after them as J
was after I. It is a slight but interesting instance of convergence that
its name is exactly parallel to the name “Double Gamma” which the Greek
grammarians coined for F long before.
142. CAPITALS AND MINUSCULES
The distinction between capitals and “small” letters is one which
we learn so early in life that we are wont to take it as something
self-evident and natural. Yet it is a late addition in the history of
the alphabet. Greeks and Romans knew nothing of it. They wrote wholly in
what we should call capital letters. If they wanted a title or heading to
stand out, they made the letters larger, but not different in form. The
same is done to-day in Hebrew and Arabic, and in fact in all alphabets
except those of Europe.
Our own two kinds or fonts of letters, the capital and “lower case” or
“minuscule,” are more different than we ordinarily realize. We have seen
them both so often in the same words that we are likely to forget that
the “A” differs even more in form than in size from “a,” and that “b” has
wholly lost the upper of the two loops which mark “B.” In late Imperial
Roman times the original “capital” forms of the letters were retained
for inscriptional purposes, but in ordinary writing changes began to
creep in. These modifications increased in the Middle Ages, giving rise
first to the “Uncial” and then to the “Minuscule” forms of the letters.
Both represent a cursive rather than a formal script. The minuscules are
essentially the modern “small” letters. But when they first developed,
people wrote wholly in them, reserving the older formal capitals for
chapter initials. Later, the capitals crept out of their temporary rarity
and came to head paragraphs, sentences, proper names, and in fact all
words that seemed important. Even as late as a few centuries ago, every
English noun was written and printed with a capital letter, as it still
is in German. Of course little or nothing was gained by this procedure.
In many sentences the significant word must be a verb or adjective; and
yet, according to the arbitrary old rule, it was the noun that was made
to stand out.
To-day we still feel it necessary in English to retain capitals for
proper names. It is certain that a suggestion to commence these also with
small letters would be met with the objection that a loss of clearness
would be entailed. As a matter of fact, the cases in which ambiguity
between a common and proper noun might ensue would be exceedingly few;
the occasional inconvenience so caused would be more than compensated
for by increased simplicity of writing and printing. Every child would
learn its letters in little more than half the time that it requires
now. The printer would be able to operate with half as many characters,
and typewriting machines could dispense with a shift key. French and
Spanish designate proper adjectives without capitals and encounter no
misunderstanding, and all English telegrams are sent in a code that makes
no distinction. When we read the newspaper in the morning and think
that the mixture of capital and small letters is necessary for our easy
comprehension of the page, we forget that this same news came over the
wire without capitals.
143. CONSERVATISM AND RATIONALIZATION
The fact is that we have become so habituated to the existing method
that a departure from it might temporarily be a bit disconcerting.
Consequently we rationalize our cumbersome habit, taking for granted or
explaining that this custom is intrinsically and logically best; although
a moments objective reflection suffices to show that the system we are so
addicted to costs each of us, and will cost the next generation, time,
energy, and money without bringing substantial compensation.
It is true that this waste is distributed through our lives in small
driblets, and therefore is something that can be borne without seeming
inconvenience. Civilization undoubtedly can continue to thrive even
while it adheres to the antiquated and jumbling method of mixing two
kinds of letters where one is sufficient. Yet the practice illustrates
the principle that the most civilized as the most savage nations assert
and believe that they adhere to their institutions after an impartial
consideration of all alternatives and in full exercise of wisdom, whereas
analysis regularly reveals them as astonishingly resistive to alteration
whether for better or worse.
If our capital letters had been purposely superadded to the small ones
as a means of distinguishing certain kinds of words, a modern claim
that they were needed for this purpose could perhaps be accepted. But
since the history of the alphabet shows that the capital letters are
the earlier ones, that the small letters were for centuries used alone,
and that systems of writing have operated and operate without the
distinction, it is clear that utility cannot be the true motive. The
employment of capital letters as initials originated in a desire for
ornamentation. It is an embroidery, the result of a play of the æsthetic
sense. It is the use of capitals that has caused the false sense of their
need, not necessity that has led to their use.
144. GOTHIC
Another exemplification of how tenaciously men cling to the accustomed
at the expense of efficiency, is provided by the “Black-Letter” or
“Gothic” alphabet used in Germany and Scandinavia. This is nothing but
the Roman letters as elaborated by the manuscript-copying monks of
northern Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages, when a book was as
much a work of art as a volume of reading matter. The sharp angles,
double connecting strokes, goose-quill flourishes, and other increments
of the Gothic letters undoubtedly possess a decorative effect, although
an over-elaborate one. They were evolved in a period when a copyist
cheerfully lettered for a year in producing a volume, and the lord or
bishop into whose hands it passed was as likely to turn the leaves in
admiration of the black and red characters as to spend time in reading
them.
When printing was introduced, the first types were the intricate and
angular Gothic ones customary in Germany. The Italians, who had always
been half-hearted about the Gothic forms, soon revolted. Under the
influence of the Renaissance and its renewed inspiration from classical
antiquity, they reverted as far as possible to the ancient shapes of
the characters. Even the mediæval small letters were simplified and
rounded as much as possible to bring them into accord with the old
Roman style. From Italy these types spread to France and most other
European countries, including England, which for the first fifty years
had printed in Black-Letter. Only in north central Europe did the Gothic
forms continue to prevail, although even there all scientific books have
for some time been printed in the Roman alphabet. Yet Germans sometimes
complain of the “difficulty” of the Roman letters, and books intended for
popular sale, and newspapers, go into Gothic. There can be little doubt
that in time the Roman letters will dispossess the Gothic ones in Germany
and Scandinavia except for ornamental display heads. But the established
ways die hard; Gothic letters may linger on as the “old-style” calendar
with its eleven-day belatedness held out in England until 1752 and in
Russia until 1917.
[Illustration: FIG. 30. The spread of alphabetic writing. Course of
Occidental alphabets in dotted lines; West Asiatic, continuous lines;
Indic, broken lines. The numbers stand for centuries: with hollow
circles, before Christ; with solid circles, after Christ. Crossed circle,
point of origin, Phœnicia, 11th century B.C. _Abbreviations_: Aram,
Aramæan; Bl L, Black Letter (Gothic); Cyr, Cyrillic; Est, Estrangelo;
Etr, Etruscan; Go, Gothic (Runes); Gr Min, Unc, Greek Minuscule, Uncial;
In Ba, Indo-Bactrian (Kharoshthi); I, Israelite; R Min, Unc, Roman
Minuscule, Uncial; Sc, Scandinavian (Rune). The flow was often back and
forth; compare the 2,000 year development from Phœnician to Ionian to
Athens to Alexandria (Uncial) to Constantinople (Minuscule) to Russian;
or from Phœnician northward to Aramæan, thence south to Nabathean and
Arabic, east to Pehlevi and back west to Armenian.]
145. HEBREW AND ARABIC
Only a small part of the history of the alphabet was unfolded in Europe,
where the seemingly so different forms of writing that have been
discussed are after all only fairly close variants of the early Greek
letters. In Asia the alphabet underwent more profound changes.
The chief modern Semitic alphabets, Hebrew and Arabic, are considerably
more altered from the primitive Semitic or Phœnician than is our own
alphabet. The Hebrew letters were slowly evolved, during the first ten
centuries after Christ, under influences which have turned most of
them as nearly as possible into parts of squarish boxes. B and K, M
and S, G and N, H and CH and T, D and V and Z and R are shaped as if
with intent to look alike rather than different. Arabic, on the other
hand, runs wholly to curves: circles, segments of circles, and round
flourishes; and several of its letters have become identical except for
diacritical marks. If we put side by side the corresponding primitive
Semitic, the modern English, the Hebrew, and the Arabic letters, it is
at once apparent that in most cases English observes most faithfully the
3,000-years old forms. The cause of these changes in Hebrew and Arabic is
in the main their derivation from alphabets descended from the Aramæan
alphabet, a form of script that grew up during the seventh century
B.C. in Aram to the northeast of Phœnicia. The Aramæans were Semites
and therefore kept to the original value of the Phœnician letters more
closely than the Greeks and Romans. On the other hand, they employed the
alphabet primarily for business purposes and rapidly altered it to a
cursive form, in which the looped or enclosing letters like A, B, D were
opened and the way was cleared for a series of increasing modifications.
Greek and Roman writing, on the other hand, were at first used largely in
monumental, dedicatory, legal, and religious connections, and preserved
clarity of form at the expense of rapidity of production.
One feature of primitive Semitic, most Asiatic alphabets retained for a
long time: the lack of vowel signs. In the end, however, representation
of the vowels proved to be so advantageous that it was introduced.
Yet the later Semites did not follow the Greek example of converting
dispensable consonantal signs into vocalic ones. They continued to
recognize consonant signs as the only real letters, and then added
smaller marks, or “points” as they are called, for the vowels. These
points correspond more or less to the grave, acute, and circumflex
accents which French uses to distinguish vowel shades or qualities, é, è,
ê, and e, for instance; and to the double dot or diæresis which German
puts upon its “umlaut” vowels, as to distinguish ä (= e) from a. There is
this difference, however: whereas European points are reserved for minor
modifications, Hebrew and Arabic have no other means of representing
vowels than these points. The vowels therefore remain definitely
subsidiary to the consonants; to the extent of this deficiency Hebrew has
adhered more closely to the primitive Semitic system than have we.
The reason for this difference lies probably in the fact that Hebrew and
Arabic have retained virtually all the consonants of ancient Semitic.
Hence the breaths and stops could not be dispensed with, or at least such
was the feeling of their speakers. In the Indo-European languages, these
sounds being wanting, the transformation of the superfluous signs into
the letters needed for the vowels was suggested to the Greeks. The step
perfecting the alphabet was therefore taken by them not so much because
they possessed originality or specially fertile imagination, as because
of the accident that their speech consisted of sounds considerably
different from those of Semitic. Perhaps the Greeks once complained
of the unfitness of the Phœnician alphabet, and adjusted it to their
language with grumblings. Had they been able to take it over unmodified,
as the Hebrews and Arabs were able, it is probable that they would
cheerfully have done so with all its imperfection. In that case they, and
after them the Romans, and perhaps we too, would very likely have gone on
writing only consonants as full letters and representing vowels by the
Semitic method of subsidiary points. In short, even so enterprising and
innovating a people as the Greeks are generally reputed to have been,
made their important contribution to the alphabet less because they
wished to improve it than because an accident of phonetics led them to
find the means. Such are the marvels of human invention when divested of
their romantic halo and examined objectively.
146. THE SPREAD EASTWARD: THE WRITING OF INDIA
The diffusion of the alphabet eastward from its point of origin was even
greater than its spread through Europe. Most of this extension in Asia is
comprised in two great streams. One of these followed the southern edge
of the continent. This was a movement that began some centuries before
Christ, and often followed water routes. The second flow was mainly
post-Christian and affected chiefly the inland peoples of central Asia.
India is the country of most importance in the development of the south
Asiatic alphabets. The forms of the Sanskrit letters show that they and
the subsequent Hindu alphabets are derivatives, though much altered
ones, from the primitive Semitic writing. Exactly how the alphabet was
carried from the shore of the Mediterranean to India has not been fully
determined. By some the prototype of the principal earliest Indian form
of writing is thought to have been the alphabet of the south Arabian
Sabæans or Himyarites of five or six hundred years B.C. As the Arabs were
Semites, and as there was a certain amount of commerce up and down the
Red Sea, it is not surprising that even these rather remote and backward
people had taken up writing. Between south Arabia and India there was
also some intercourse, so that a further transmission by sea seems
possible enough. Another view is that Hindu traders learned and imported
a north Semitic alphabet perhaps as early as during the seventh century,
from which the Brahmi was made over, from which in turn all living Indian
alphabets are derived. Besides this main importation, there was another,
from Aramæan sources, which gave rise to a different form of Hindu
writing, the Kharoshthi or Indo-Bactrian of the Punjab, which spread for
a time into Turkistan but soon died out in India.
147. SYLLABIC TENDENCIES
One trait of Indian alphabets leads back to their direct Semitic origin:
they did not recognize the vowels. The Hindus speaking Indo-European
were confronted with the same difficulty as the Greeks when they took
over the vowelless Semitic alphabet. But they solved the difficulty
in their own way. They assumed that a consonantal letter stood for a
consonant plus a vowel. Thus, each letter was really the sign for a
syllable. The most common vowel in Sanskrit being A, this was assumed as
being inherent in the consonant. For instance, their letter for K was not
read K, but KA. This meant that when K was to be read merely as K, it had
to be specially designated: something had to be done to take away the
vowel A. A diacritical sign was added, known as the virama. This negative
sign is a “point” just as much as the positive vowel points of Hebrew;
but was used to denote exactly the opposite.
There are of course other vowels than A in Sanskrit. These were
represented by diacritical marks analogous to the virama. Thus while this
is a diagonal stroke below the consonant, U is represented by a small
curve below, E by a backward curve above, AI by two such, and so on.
If a syllable had two consonants before the vowel, these were condensed
into one, the essential parts of each being combined into a more complex
character. This was much as if we were to write “try” by forcing t and r
into a special character showing the cross stroke of the t and the roll
or hook of the r, and superposing a diæresis for the vowel. This process
reduced every syllable to a single though often compound letter. If the
syllable ended in a consonant, this carried over as the beginning of the
next syllable. Even the end consonant of a word was written as the first
letter of the next. According to the Sanskrit plan, “the dog is mad”
would be rendered “the do gi sma d-.”
Obviously, there is something unnaturally regular, a systematic
artificiality, about such a scheme. Love of system cropped out otherwise.
The Hindus devised a new symbol—mainly by differentiation of old ones—for
every sound that they had and Semitic lacked. Thus they doubled the
number of their letters. Then they rearranged their order on a phonetic
and logical basis. All sounds made against the back palate were brought
into one group; those formed against the fore-palate, gums, and teeth
came after; the lip sounds last. Within each of the groups the letters
followed one another in a fixed order according to their method of
production—voiceless stops always first, nasals always last.
The result of these innovations was that the Hindu alphabets diverged
much more from the Semitic original than did ours. This perhaps was
really to be expected, since writing entered India by long leaps between
peoples that were not in intimate relations. Also, by the time the
alphabet first reached them, the Hindus, in the isolation of their
remote peninsula, had already worked out an advanced and unique type
of civilization. This fact must have predisposed them to make over any
imported invention in conformity with their established habits.
148. THE EAST INDIES: PHILIPPINE ALPHABETS
The spread of the Hindu alphabet within India, over southeastern Asia,
and into the East Indian archipelago, cannot be followed here because
it is an intricate story, interwoven with the history of Brahmanism and
Buddhism. It may be said that in general, with the chief exception of
China, Hindu writing followed where Hindu religion penetrated. But it may
be illuminating to touch briefly on one of the extensions.
In the early centuries after Christ, Hindus began to reach the East
Indies, especially Sumatra and Java. Here they established principalities
or kingdoms and their religion. Many arts were also imported by them,
such as iron working, batik dyeing, sculpture, drama, and writing. From
perhaps the sixth to the fifteenth centuries, the Malaysian population of
Java lived under a heavy layer of Hindu culture (§ 104, 126, 262), and
literacy evidently became fairly widespread. Greater or less portions of
this culture were transported to the other East Indian islands and with
them went writing. In the Philippines, the Spaniards of the sixteenth
century found several related alphabets, one to each of the principal
nationalities, which seem derived from Bengal some eight hundred years
before.
The Malayan languages are unusually simple in their array of sounds.
Hence the greater part of the elaborate Sanskrit alphabet was discarded
by them. But the salient characteristics of Sanskrit writing were
retained. A consonant was read as consonant plus A. Points were provided
if the consonant was to be read with other vowels. Of such points, the
Philippine alphabets employed only two. One, put above the consonant,
served indiscriminately for I and E, the other, below, for U and O. The
position of the points connects them with the Sanskrit vowel signs. In
this way the Philippine languages were adequately rendered with a set of
about twelve consonantal letters, three for the independent vowels, and
two vowel points.
At the time of the Spanish discovery, the native Philippine alphabets
were already meeting Arabic writing, which had shortly before been
introduced in the southern islands with Mohammedanism. The Spaniards of
course brought the Roman alphabet. Under this double competition the
use of native writing soon began to decay. The most advanced of the
Filipino nationalities, such as the Tagalog and Bisaya, have long since
given up their old letters. Yet it has recently been discovered that two
varieties of the native writing still survive—both of them among backward
tribes: the Tagbanua of Palawan and the Mangyan of Mindoro. Here in the
jungle, among half clothed savages living under rude thatches and without
firearms or government, the remotest descendants of the ancient Sanskrit
alphabet linger.
Three widely different descendants of the primitive Semitic alphabet
have therefore met in this archipelago. One, beginning its journey
some twenty-five hundred years ago, traveled via Arabia and northern
India, probably reaching the Philippines by 800 A.D. The second evolved
in the Semitic homeland, finally poured out of northern Arabia with
Mohammedanism, was carried across India to the Malay Peninsula, and
thence leaped across the sea to Borneo and the Philippines about 1,400
A.D. The third followed the longest journey: from the Phœnicians to the
Greeks, to southern Italy, to Rome, to Spain, and, after Columbus, to
Mexico, and then across the Pacific ocean to Manila shortly before A.D.
1,600.
149. NORTHERN ASIA: THE CONFLICT OF SYSTEMS IN KOREA
The history of the central and north Asiatic alphabets is complex. It may
be summed up in the statement that Aramæan derivatives of the primitive
Semitic writing, evolving in and near Syria, in the six or seven
centuries before the birth of Christ, were carried east and northeast
from one people to another. One of the modifications of Aramæan, the
Estrangelo Syriac, was transported by a sect of heretical Christians,
the Nestorians, to the Uigurs and Mongols, from whom the Manchus derived
their system.
The farthest extension of the alphabet in Asia was to the shores of the
Pacific ocean, in Korea. Korean writing however seems to be derived from
an Indian source, through Tibetan or perhaps Pali, the sacred language
and script of the Southern branch of Buddhism; hence to be only a remote
collateral relative of the neighboring Manchu. In Korea, the spread of
the alphabet was checked, not through any inherent flaws or weakness of
age, but by the competition of a totally different system of writing:
that of the Chinese.
Chinese writing is not alphabetic at all. To some extent it does
represent sounds. But it represents syllables or words, not letters; and
it represents them by the rebus method. The basis of Chinese writing is
ideographic. It is therefore a modified form of picture writing, and
theoretically pertains to an early stage, almost comparable in principle
to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
In a conflict between such a primitive system and a truly alphabetic
one, the latter should of course prevail on account of its much greater
efficiency and simplicity. Actually, however, the Korean alphabet did not
triumph but barely managed to maintain an existence alongside Chinese.
The cause was a familiar one: the tremendous social conservatism of the
human mind.
When the native alphabet obtained its hold in Korea, it was confronted
by an overwhelming Chinese influence. The court, the government, the
institutions, official religion, all activities of people of fashion and
importance, were modeled after Chinese examples. The man who could not
write and read Chinese characters was eliminated from polite society
and advancement. This was only natural. The civilization of China is
one of the most ancient and greatest in the world, and the Koreans
were a smaller people and close neighbors. Western civilization was
thousands of miles away, and it was only now and then that a driblet
from it penetrated to the eastern edge of Asia. On one side then stood
the undoubted practical advantage of the alphabet from the West; on the
other, the momentum of the whole mass of Chinese culture. The outcome
was that the nationally Korean and true alphabet became something that
shopkeepers and low people made use of; a thing easy to learn and more or
less contemptible. But laws and documents and books of higher learning
were written in Chinese characters, which innumerable Koreans for
generation after generation spent years of their lives in mastering.
If the human mind were really rational, if it operated rationally
only a tenth as much as it fondly believes, it would not do awkward
and difficult things after a simpler and more effective means to the
same end had been put within its reach, as was the case in this Korean
situation. Another principle beyond mere outright inertia is operative
here. This is the tendency of culture elements which have for some
time been associated, often only by accident, to form an interlocked
aggregation or “complex.” Once such a complex or cluster has acquired
a certain coherence, it survives with a tenacity independent of the
degree of inherent or logical connection between its elements. The fact
that ideographs were associated with Chinese religion, literature, and
institutions, constituted them part of what may be called the Chinese
complex. The mass of this Chinese complex far overbalanced the slight
and scattering Western influences. The alphabet drifted into Korea as
an isolated fragment, and was promptly borne down by the weight of the
elaborate and closely knit culture aggregate of Chinese origin. This
brute fact, and not any superior reasonableness or intrinsic merit of one
system or the other, determined the issue between them.
In the same way the “complex” that we know as Western
civilization—Christianity and collars, science and picture films, factory
labor and democracy, fine and base all tangled together—is to-day
crushing the breath out of ancient and exotic cultures. We like to call
the process “Progress” because that is more comforting than to view it as
the rolling of a fate beyond our control.