Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/29

Rh pervasive throughout civilised society it rises to even greater prominence and significance in the case of the hundreds of thousands who as secretaries, copyists or clerks follow writing as their profession or business, and derive from it their sole means of subsistence.

Such persons are occupied the year round, for from 8 to 16 hours daily, exclusively in clerical work. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of an art which is pre-eminently the vital principle in the machinery of the Law, the Civil Service, Commerce, Science and individual as well as international communication. If we look into the origin and development of handwriting we find it had its birth in an age of semi barbarism; that at first it consisted of the most imperfect pictorial representations, which gradually merged into a still crude hieroglyphic as the basis of an incipient alphabet. Subsequently this alphabet was improved and modified, and at last developed into what may be termed a phonetic one, although very defective, the characters having little scientific meaning or relationship. From the ornate and laboured style of the mediæval period the present Italian style has been evolved, and if we carefully trace this evolution through its manifold stages and variations, we discover that it and they have all been purely responsive to exclusively caligraphic or so-called artistic demands. Pursuing the investigation a step further, the fact is revealed that these caligraphic and artistic demands have been dictated and controlled, not by logical or scientific principles, but by capricious and often conflicting theories.

The writing, and not the writer, has always been the supreme consideration in the growth of the art of penmanship. A certain style of writing was deemed or decreed to be essential, the idea of protest was never entertained, and our ancestors had to bend cringe and twist under the system of bondage thus established. As to Hygienic principles these have never been associated even in a remote degree with the history of slanting writing that for some two hundred years has flourished amongst us.

Indeed physiological requirements have not been recognised much less urged until within the past few years, and even at the