Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/130

116 difference is the result of education, that is, of the circumstances in which they develope. As it is by having li (禮) that man is higher than the bird and beast, so also it is this li which distinguishes between the Chinese and the foreigner (barbarian), and between the gentleman (君子) and the cad (小人) among Chinese. This li, however, depends for its existence and development mainly on external circumstances (所受於外); on the kind and degree of education or training which children receive.

Without this li, or sense of what is right and becoming in his social relations, man could never have produced what is called a language. To invent this, to find out and fit on the due names of the objects and phenomena of nature and of the feelings and thoughts of the mind, was a great achievement. As Hobbes writes, viewing the subject from a different stand-point, but expressing in clear direct words what Chinese writers have stated though not so well:—"But the most noble and profitable invention of all other was that of Speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connexion; whereby men register their thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men, neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears and wolves." But spoken words are air, and live a vague, uncertain life. They fade too and die from memory like an echo in the hills or a roaring of wind in the forest. So even in very early times men must have sought for a visible lasting record and evidence of their events and transactions, a way of perpetuating spoken words and saving them from the fate of dark forgetfulness. And how do Chinese think men arrived at this? Let us take for answer the words of one of their students of this branch of learning. In the introduction to the "Liu-shu-ku" the author says: Visible representation (文) proceeds from spoken