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514 with moral than with physical training are included in the course.

 Writing. The Japanese, having obtained their civilisation from China and Korea, were inevitably led to adopt the ideographic system of writing practised in those countries. Its introduction into Japan, seems to have taken place somewhere about A.D. 400, but the chronology of that early epoch is extremely obscure.

According to this ideographic system, each individual word has its separate sign, originally a kind of picture or hieroglyph. Thus, 人 is "a man," represented by his two legs; 月 is "the moon," with her horns still distinguishable; 馬 is "a horse,"—the head, mane, and legs, though hard to recognise in the abbreviated modern form of the character, having at first been clearly drawn. Few characters are so simple as these. Most are obtained by means of combination, the chief element being termed the "radical," because it gives a clue to the signification of the whole. The other part generally indicate more or less precisely the pronunciation of the word, and is therefore called the "phonetic." It is much as if, having in English special hieroglyphic signs for such easy, every-day words as "tree," "house," "hand," and "box" (a chest), we were to represent "box-wood" by a combination of the sign for "tree" and the sign for "box," a "box at the opera" by a combination of "house" and "box," a "boxing match" by a combination of "hand" and "box," and similarly in other cases. The Chinese language,