ABSTRACT
In order to understand the problem of the origin of writing, the author must try to get away from our civilized habit of mind. The symbolic character of writing is a thing people take for granted. The Koreans have frankly adopted, as their national writing, a syllabic system of Aramaic origin. The history of the development of writing thus presupposes that a rational mentality has evolved and shaken off the bonds of mysticism. The maritime code of signals is interpreted by all sailors in the same way, though each speaks a different language. The ideograph, representing ideas, not sounds, has the same advantage as a code of signals; it suppresses the word as a medium and reproduces the language thought instead of the language spoken. A signal-code, according to definition, applies only to a small number of precise and technical ideas that is unchanging ideas, which have been established by agreement among men of the same calling.
