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 civilization—­a preservation probably due, at least in part, to the fact that the spoken language is monosyllabic, uninflected and full of homonyms.

As to the way in which the Chinese system of writing has affected the mentality of those who employ it, I find some suggestive reflections in an article published in the Chinese Students’ Monthly (Baltimore), for February 1922, by Mr. Chi Li, in an article on “Some Anthropological Problems of China.”  He says (p. 327):—­

Language has been traditionally treated by European scientists as a collection of sounds instead of an expression of something inner and deeper than the vocal apparatus as it should be.  The accumulative effect of language-symbols upon one’s mental formulation is still an unexploited field.  Dividing the world culture of the living races on this basis, one perceives a fundamental difference of its types between the alphabetical users and the hieroglyphic users, each of which has its own virtues and vices.  Now, with all respects to alphabetical civilization, it must be frankly stated that it has a grave and inherent defect