The two most important human inventions are perhaps Speech and Writing. In no adequate way could man fully express his mental activities except by speech: nor could he adequately record them except by writing. And to some extent the development of the two ran a parallel course, for just as early Speech is largely an imitation of natural sounds (Onomatopœia), so early Writing is probably, in the first instance, entirely from pictures (pictograms), which from the need of acceleration became worn down to simpler forms, and finally to letters; the sense similarly declining from the plain or derivative ideas arising from pictures, to mere syllables with no intrinsic meaning, and finally to simple…
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