日 月 山 手 子 木 臣 口 牛 爪

It may here be noted that there was a tendency to curves so long as the
characters were scratched on bamboo tablets with a metal stylus. With
the invention of paper in the first century A.D., and the substitution
of a hair-pencil for the stylus, verticals and horizontals came more
into vogue.

The second step was the combination of two pictures to make a third; for
instance, a mouth with something coming out of it is "the tongue," 舌;
a mouth with something else coming out of it is "speech," "words," 言;
two trees put side by side make the picture of a "forest," 林.

The next step was to produce pictures of ideas. For instance, there
already existed in speech a word _ming_, meaning "bright." To express
this, the Chinese placed in juxtaposition the two brightest things known
to them. Thus 日 the "sun" and 月 the "moon" were combined to form 明
_ming_ "bright." There is as yet no suggestion of phonetic influence.
The combined character has a sound quite different from that of either
of its component parts, which are _jih_ and _yüeh_ respectively.

In like manner, 日 "sun" and 木 "tree," combined as 東, "the sun seen
rising through trees," signified "the east"; 言 "words" and 舌 "tongue" =
話 "speech"; 友 (old form [Illustration]) "two hands" = "friendship"; 女
"woman" and 子 "child" = 好 "good"; 女 "woman" and 生 "birth," "born of a
woman" = 姓 "clan name," showing that the ancient Chinese traced through
the mother and not through the father; 勿 streamers used in signalling a
negative = "do not!"

From 林 "two trees," the picture of a forest, we come to 森 "three trees,"