The earliest stages of writing were those in which pictographic forms were used; that is, a direct picture was drawn upon the writing surface, reproducing as nearly as possible the kind of impression made upon the observer by the object itself. To be sure, the drawing used to represent the object was not an exact reproduction or full copy of the object, but it was a fairly direct image. The visual memory image was thus aroused by a direct perceptual appeal to the eye. Anyone could read a document written in this pictograph form, if he had ever seen the objects to which the pictures referred. There was no special relation between the pictures or visual forms at this stage of development and the sounds used in articulate language. Concrete examples of such writing are seen in early monuments, where the moon is represented by the crescent, a king by the drawing of a man wearing a crown.
The next stage of development in writing began when the pictographic forms were reduced in complexity to the simplest possible lines. The reduction of the picture to a few sketchy lines depended upon the growing ability of the reader to contribute the necessary interpretation. All that was needed in the figure was something which would suggest the full picture to the mind. Indeed, it is probably true that the full picture was not needed, even in the reader's consciousness. Memory images are usually much simplified reproductions of the perceptual facts. In writing we have a concrete expression of this tendency of memory to lose its full reproductive form and to become reduced to the point of the most meager contents for conscious thought. The simplification of the written forms is attained very early, and is seen even in the figures which are used by savage tribes. Thus, to represent the number of an enemy's army, it is not necessary to draw full figures of the forms of the enemy; it is enough if single straight lines are drawn with some brief indication, perhaps at the beginning of the series of lines, to show that these stand each for an individual enemy. This simplification of the drawing leaves the written symbol with very much larger possibilities of entering into new relations in the mind of the reader. Instead, now, of being a specific drawing related to a specific object, it invites by its simple character a number of different interpretations. A straight line, for example, can represent not only the number of an enemy's army but it can represent also the number of sheep in a flock, or the number of tents in a village, or anything else which is capable of enumeration. The use of a straight line for these various purposes stimulates new mental developments. This is shown by the fact that the development of the idea of the number relation, as distinguished from the mass of possible relations in which an object may stand, is greatly facilitated by this general written symbol for numbers. The intimate relation between the development of ideas on the one hand and the development of language on the other is here very strikingly illustrated. The drawing becomes more useful because it is associated with more elaborate ideas, while the ideas develop because they find in the drawing a definite content which helps to mark and give separate character to the idea.
As soon as the drawing began to lose its significance as a direct perceptual reproduction of the object and took on new and broader meanings through the associations which attached to it, the written form became a symbol, rather than a direct appeal to visual memory. As a symbol it stood for something which, in itself, it was not. The way was thus opened for the written symbol to enter into relation with oral speech, which is also a form of symbolism. Articulate sounds are simplified forms of experience capable through association with ideas of expressing meanings not directly related to the sounds themselves. When the written symbol began to be related to the sound symbol, there was at first a loose and irregular relation between them. The Egyptians seem to have established such relations to some extent. They wrote at times with pictures standing for sounds, as we now write in rebus puzzles. In such puzzles the picture of an object is intended to call up in the mind of the reader, not the special group of ideas appropriate to the object represented in the picture, but rather the sound which serves as the name of this object. When the sound is once suggested to the reader, he is supposed to attend to that and to connect with it certain other associations appropriate to the sound. To take a modern illustration, we may, for example, use the picture of the eye to stand for the first personal pronoun. The relationship between the picture and the idea for which it is used is in this case through the sound of the name of the object depicted. That the early alphabets are of this type of rebus pictures appears in their names. The first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, for example, are named, respectively, aleph which means ox, beth which means house, and gimmel which means camel.
The complete development of a sound alphabet from this type of rebus writing required, doubtless, much experimentation on the part of the nations which succeeded in establishing the association. The Phoenicians have generally been credited with the invention of the forms and relations which we now use. Their contribution to civilization cannot be overestimated. It consisted, not in the presentation of new material or content to conscious experience, but rather in the bringing together by association of groups of contents which, in their new relation, transformed the whole process of thought and expression. They associated visual and auditory content and gave to the visual factors a meaning through association which was of such unique importance as to justify us in describing the association as a new invention.
There are certain systems of writing which indicate that the type of relationship which we use is not the only possible type of relationship. The Chinese, for example, have continued to use simple symbols which are related to complex sounds, not to elementary sounds, as are our own letters. In Chinese writing the various symbols, though much corrupted in form, stand each for an object. It is true that the forms of Chinese writing have long since lost their direct relationship to the pictures in which they originated. The present forms are simplified and symbolical. So free has the symbolism become that the form has been arbitrarily modified to make it possible for the writer to use freely the crude tools with which the Chinaman does his writing. These practical considerations could not have become operative, if the direct pictographic character of the symbols had not long since given place to a symbolical character which renders the figure important, not because of what it shows in itself, but rather because of what it suggests to the mind of the reader. The relation of the symbol to elementary sounds has, however, never been established. This lack of association with elementary sounds keeps the Chinese writing at a level much lower and nearer to primitive pictographic forms than is our writing.
Whether we have a highly elaborated symbolical system, such as that which appears in Chinese writing, or a form of writing which is related to sound, the chief fact regarding writing, as regarding all language, is that it depends for its value very much more upon the ideational relations into which the symbols are brought in the individual's mind than upon the impressions which they arouse.
The ideational associations which appear in developed language could never have reached the elaborate form which they have at present if there had not been social co-operation. The tendency of the individual when left to himself is to drop back into the direct adjustments which are appropriate to his own life. He might possibly develop articulation to a certain extent for his own sake, but the chief impulse to the development of language comes through intercourse with others. As we have seen, the development of the simplest forms of communication, as in animals, is a matter of social imitation. Writing is also an outgrowth of social relations. It is extremely doubtful whether even the child of civilized parents would ever have any sufficient motive for the development of writing, if it were not for the social encouragement he receives.
4. The Extension of Communication by Human Invention[145]
No one who is asked to name the agencies that weave the great web of intellectual and material influences and counter-influences by which modern humanity is combined into the unity of society will need much reflection to give first rank to the newspaper, along with the post, railroad, and telegraph.