That analysis is all very well for the character as it stands now; but before the Christian era this same character was written [Illustration] and was a picture, not of men and of a cross, but of a sheaf of corn.  It came to mean “come,” says the Chinese etymologist, “because corn comes” from heaven.”

Such is the written language of China, and such indeed it was, already under the dominion of the phonetic system, by which endless new combinations may still be formed, at the very earliest point to which history, as distinguished from legend, will carry us,—­some eight or nine centuries B.C.  There are no genuine remains of pure picture-writing, to enable us to judge how far the Chinese had got before the phonetic system was invented, though many attempts have been made to palm off gross forgeries as such.

The great majority of characters, as I have said, are capable of being easily resolved into the two important parts which I have attempted to describe—­the original phonetic portion, which guides toward pronunciation, and the added indicator, which guides toward the sense.

Even the practical student, who desires to learn to read and write Chinese for purely business purposes, will find himself constrained to follow out this analysis, if he wishes to commit to memory a serviceable number of characters.  With no other hold upon them beyond their mere outlines, he will find the characters so bewildering, so elusive, as to present almost insuperable difficulties.

But under the influence of systematic study, coupled with a fair amount of perseverance, these difficulties disappear, and leave the triumphant student amply rewarded for his pains.

LECTURE II

A CHINESE LIBRARY

A CHINESE LIBRARY

The endowment of a Chinese chair at Columbia University naturally suggests the acquisition of a good Chinese library.  At the University of Cambridge, England, there is what I can only characterise as an ideal Chinese library.  It was not bought off-hand in the market,—­such a collection indeed would never come into the market,—­but the books were patiently and carefully brought together by my predecessor in the Chinese chair during a period of over forty years’ residence in China.  The result is an admirable selection of representative works, always in good, and sometimes in rare, editions, covering the whole field of what is most valuable in Chinese literature.

I now propose, with your approval, to give a slight sketch of the Cambridge Library, in which I spend a portion of almost every day of my life, and which I further venture to recommend as the type of that collection which Columbia University should endeavour to place upon her shelves.

The Chinese library at Cambridge consists of 4304 volumes, roughly distributed under seven heads.  These volumes, it should be stated, are not the usual thin, paper-covered volumes of an ordinary Chinese work, but they consist each of several of the original Chinese volumes bound together in cloth or leather, lettered on the back, and standing on the shelves, as our books do, instead of lying flat, as is the custom in China.