Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/16

2 however, it has not played a great or very conspicuous part, nor has it wrought for mankind the noble works of other nations. But we must also bear in mind that we know the history of the world only as told by Western authors. Still, the language and literature of China can never among people remote from that country arouse any enthusiastic interest such as that with which some of the Semitic and Indo-European languages have been studied by western scholars, especially within a recent period.

It cannot be maintained, however, that the language and literature of China have failed to excite the curiosity and attract the attention of Western students. Nor should we expect it to be otherwise, at least as to the language, when we think on its nature and the way in which it is written, so unlike all that we are familiar with in other languages. As Geiger truly observes, no one who aims at obtaining an insight into what mankind actually is can omit to take notice of the Chinese language, partly on account of the enormous territory over which it extends, partly because of its typical peculiarity, and partly because it is a literary language of the first rank, having original intellectual monuments from before the eighth century B.C. Yet it was not until about the end of the sixteenth century that important and authentic information about China and its language began to be acquired by European scholars, and the works written by these show how the language puzzled and enchanted them. One of its great charms for them at first seems to have been found in its written characters. These we find described as "Characters Real, which express neither letters nor words in gross, but Things or Notions; insomuch as countries and provinces, which understand not one another's language, can nevertheless read one another's writings, because the characters are accepted more generally than the languages do extend; and therefore they have a vast multitude of characters, as many, I suppose, as radical words." Afterwards, the qualities of the language, such as its richness, terseness, and simplicity, became subjects of