Mr. Bell believes that he has achieved this result, and his expositions before the Ethnological Society, the College of Preceptors, and the Society of Arts, have had for their object the presentation of various phases of the system. The fitness of the term visible speech may, be urges, be shown by the analogy of an artist, who, wishing to depict a laughing face, draws the lines of the face as seen under the influence of mirth; be depicts, in fact, visible laughter. Every passion and sentiment, emotion and feeling, has this kind of facial writing; and an idea of it might be expressed on paper by a picture of the muscular arrangements of the face, so that all persons seeing the symbols would have a common knowledge of their meaning. In forming any sound, we adjust the parts of the mouth to certain definite attitudes; and the sound is the necessary result of our putting the mouth in such a shape. If, then, we could represent the various positions of the mouth, we should have in those symbols a representation of the sounds which cannot but result from putting the mouth in the positions symbolized. Now, Mr. Bell claims to have applied this system of symbolization to every possible arrangement of the mouth: he claims that, whatever your language, and whether you speak a refined or a rustic dialect, he can show, in the forms of his new letters, the exact sounds you make use of. If this be so, a Chinaman may read English, or an Englishman Chinese, without any difficulty or uncertainty, after he has learned to form his mouth in accordance with the directions given him by the letters. Nearly all the existing alphabets contain vestiges of a similar relation between letters and sounds—a relation which has nearly disappeared during the changes which alphabetic characters have gradually undergone. Mr. Bell gave the following anecdote illustrating this relation: "Shortly before I left Edinburgh, in the early part of last year, an elderly lady called on me, accompanied by two young ladies, who were going out to India as missionaries. The elderly lady had been for upward of twenty years engaged in mission work, and she spoke the language of the district like a native. Nevertheless, she could not teach the English girls to pronounce some of the peculiar sounds which she had acquired by habit. They had been for some time under her instruction, but they could not catch the knack of certain characteristic elements. Having heard of 'Visible Speech,' the lady called to solicit my assistance. I know nothing of the language she pronounced before me. Some of the sounds I had never heard in linguistic combinations, though, of course, I am acquainted with them theoretically. I saw the young ladies for half an hour, but this proved long enough to give them the power of pronouncing the difficult sounds which, while they did not know precisely what to do, they could not articulate. Strangely enough, since I came to reside in London, I heard a clergyman and former missionary, speaking of these very girls, remark on the great success with which they pronounced the Canarese language before they left this country; and the speaker knew nothing of their previous difficulty, or how it had been overcome."
The system analyzes all sounds according to the mode in which they are produced. The number of sounds discriminated in various languages amounts to several times the number of letters in the English alphabet; and even in English, although there are only twenty-six letters, there are at least forty different sounds. The Church Missionary Society employ nearly two hundred different letters or symbols in their several printed books; and the list is even then imperfect as regards many of the languages.
Mr. Bell finds thirty symbols sufficient to denote all the two hundred varieties of vowel and consonant sounds. What kind of symbols they are, we do not know, (for a reason presently to be explained;) but he states that, while each elementary sound has its own single type to express it in printing, he requires only thirty actual types to express them as used in language. Each symbol has a name, which does not include the sound of the letter, but merely describes its form. The learner has thus at first only to recognize pictures. But the name of the symbol also expresses the arrangement of the mouth which produces the sound; so that, when the symbol is named, the organic formation of its sound is named at the same time. In order that thirty symbols may denote two hundred sounds, Mr. Bell has adopted certain modes of classification. All vowels receive a common generic symbol, all consonants another; vocality and whisper have their respective symbols; so have inspiration, retention, and expulsion of breath; so have the touching and the vibration of the several vocal organs; so have the lips, the palate, the pharynx, the glottis, and the different parts of the tongue; so has the breathing of sounds through the nostrils, or through nearly closed teeth. There are thirty of these generic meanings altogether, and they are combined to make up letters, every part of every letter having a meaning. The thirty symbols need not be represented mechanically by exactly thirty types; they may be embodied in a larger or smaller number, according to taste or convenience; such of the symbols as together represent simple elements of speech being properly combined in single types. "The highest possible advantages of the system," we are told, "would be secured by extending the number of types to about sixty. At present, I and my sons—as yet the only experts in the use of visible speech—write the alphabet in a form that would be cast on between forty and fifty types, which is but little more than the number in an ordinary English fount, including diphthongs and accented letters. This number does not require to be exceeded in order to print, with typographic simplicity, the myriad dialects of all nations."
Mr. Bell pointed out the prospective usefulness of his system in telegraphic communication. The symbols of speech may, in all their varieties, be transmitted by telegraph, through any country, without the necessity for a knowledge of the language adopted on the part of the signaller. He would only have to discriminate forms of letters; he may be totally ignorant of the value of a single letter, and yet may convey the telegram so as to be intelligible to the person to whom it is virtually addressed. It is known that the telegrams from India now reach London in a sadly mutilated and unintelligible state, owing to their passing through the hands of Turkish and Persian agents who do not know the English alphabet; an evil which, it is contended, would be removed by the adoption of the new system.
The mode in which Mr. Bell illustrated his method was curious and interesting. His son uttered a great variety of sounds—whispered consonants, vocal consonants, vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels, interjections, inarticulate sounds, animal sounds, mechanical sounds—all of which are susceptible of being represented in printed or written symbols. Then, the son being out of the room, several gentlemen came forward and repeated short sentences to Mr. Bell, some in Arabic, some in Persian, some in Bengali, some in Negro patois, some in Gaelic, some in Lowland Scotch, some in Norfolk dialect; Mr. Bell wrote down the sounds as he heard them, without, except in one or two cases, knowing the purport of the words. The son was called in, and, looking attentively at the writing, repeated the sentences with an accuracy of sound and intonation which seemed to strike those who were best able to judge as being very remarkable.
There is something a little tantalizing in the present state of the subject. We know that there is a system of symbols, but we do not know the symbols themselves. Mr. Bell states that, besides the members of his own family, only three persons have been made acquainted with the symbols, and the details of their formation—namely, Sir David Brewster, Professor de Morgan, and Mr. Ellis. He has not intended, and does not intend, to secure his system to himself by any kind of patent or copyright; and yet, if he made it fully public at once, he would lose any legitimate hold over it to which he is rightly entitled. He has submitted his plan to certain government departments, but has found that it is "nobody's business" to take up a subject which is not included in any definite sphere of duty. He has next endeavored to interest scientific societies in the matter, so far as to induce them to urge the trial of his plan by the government. He says: "I am willing to surrender my private rights in the invention pro bono publico, on the simple condition that the costs of so introducing the system may be undertaken at the public charge." Teachers there must be, because "the publication of the theory of the system and the scheme of symbols must necessarily be supplemented by oral teaching of the scales of sound, in order that the invention may be applied with uniformity." The reading of the paper gave rise to some discussion at the Society of Arts, not as to the value and merit of the system itself, but as to anything which the society can do in the matter. It is one rule of the society that no new invention shall be brought forward without a full explanation of the modus operandi as well as of the leading principles; and in this case, the objection lay that the inventor declined to make public, unless under some government agreement, the actual secret of his method. Mr. Bell replied that, if even he were to write a sentence in view of the audience, it would add very little to their real knowledge of the subject; but he furthermore said he was ready to explain the details of the system to any committee whom the council of the society, or any other scientific body, may appoint. To us it appears that neither Mr. Bell nor the society is open to blame in the matter. He has the right to name the conditions under which he will make his system public; while they have the right to lay down rules for the governance of their own proceedings. The results actually produced struck the auditors generally with surprise; and there can be little doubt that the system will in some way or other, at all events, work itself into public notice.