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.