There are, however, many considerations, less obvious to a European,
which can be adduced in favour of the ideographic system, to which
something of the solid stability of the Chinese civilization is probably
traceable. To us, it seems obvious that a written word must represent a
sound, whereas to the Chinese it represents an idea. We have adopted the
Chinese system ourselves as regards numerals; "1922," for example, can
be read in English, French, or any other language, with quite different
sounds, but with the same meaning. Similarly what is written in Chinese
characters can be read throughout China, in spite of the difference of
dialects which are mutually unintelligible when spoken. Even a Japanese,
without knowing a word of spoken Chinese, can read out Chinese script in
Japanese, just as he could read a row of numerals written by an
Englishman. And the Chinese can still read their classics, although the
spoken language must have changed as much as French has changed from
Latin.

The advantage of writing over speech is its greater permanence, which
enables it to be a means of communication between different places and
different times. But since the spoken language changes from place to
place and from time to time, the characteristic advantage of writing is
more fully attained by a script which does not aim at representing
spoken sounds than by one which does.

Speaking historically, there is nothing peculiar in the Chinese method
of writing, which represents a stage through which all writing probably
passed. Writing everywhere seems to have begun as pictures, not as a
symbolic representation of sounds. I understand that in Egyptian
hieroglyphics the course of development from ideograms to phonetic
writing can be studied. What is peculiar in China is the preservation of
the ideographic system throughout thousands of years of advanced