Libra

“ The Balance in poetical fiction belongs to the goddess Astræa, and in the pans the fate of mortals was supposed to be weighed.
The symbol of the sign Libra, , represents it is said the beam of a pair of scales in equilibrium, thus denoting the equal duration of the nights and days. Brown however thinks that the symbol represents the top of the archaic Euphratean altar, located in the zodiac next preceding Scorpio, and figured on early gems, tablets, and boundary stones.
Allen points out that the stars in Libra, α, μ, ξ, δ, β, χ, ζ, and ν seem to represent a circular altar. ”

“ The constellation Libra—the seventh sign of the zodiac, and the middle one of the Air Triplicity—is a cardinal, sanguine, diurnal, airy, masculine sign, governing the loins. The higher attributes are inspiration and perception. ”

“ This, then, is the precedent by which I support the similar, and rather startling, interpretation I propose of these obscure words "In mena Libra alway."
There are two twin stars, of the same magnitude, and not far apart, each of which bears the Arabic title of Min al auwâ; one (β Virginis) in the sign Virgo—the other (δ Virginis) in that of Libra.
The latter, in the south of England, in Chaucer's time, would rise a few minutes before the autumnal equinoctial point, and might be called Libra Min al auwâ either from that circumstance, or to distinguish it from its namesake in Virgo. ”

“ The Fall (Lat. occasus vel detrimentum) of a planet is the sign opposite its mansion. Libra is opposite Aries; therefore Libra is the Fall of Mars.
The Dejection or Depression (Lat. dedecus) of a planet is the sign opposite to that of its exaltation. Libra is opposite Aries; therefore Libra is the Dejection of the Sun. And so on.
A Triplicity is a combination of three signs in the form of a triangle, each 120° apart. Thus Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius form the first triplicity; Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, the second; Gemini, Libra, Aquarius, the third ”

“ Libra is the extreme Western point of his path, where he turns away from the Northern Hemisphere, and in midwinter, at Christmas, he is in Capricorn at the farthest point South, where his horizontal ray leaves the people of the North in winter’s icy grip. The effect of the angles, the first, fourth, seventh and tenth houses, is similar to the effect of the cardinal signs because these houses are at the East, North, West and South points of the horoscope. ”

“ This makes the length of each sign, or space, 30 degrees, and hence the 12 signs, which are called the Signs of the Zodiac, equal 360 degrees or a complete circle. (See Chapter X, The Time o’ Day.)
The Signs of the Zodiac and the constellations of the Zodiac have the following names: Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water Bearer, and Pisces, the Fishes. ”

“ But in this essay I am contemplating man as he was before hundreds of generations of speaking ancestors had evolved such cerebral powers.
I begin with some observations on the phonetic elements. These are no other than what we call the alphabet, the simple sounds which combined together make up the words of a language. In all European tongues, the mere letters of the alphabet, by themselves, have no meaning and convey no idea; furthermore, their value in a word is fixed; and, thirdly, arranged in a word, they are sufficient to convey its sound and sense to one acquainted with their values. ”

“ The oral word therefore bears no more necessary relation to the phonetic organs than to the auditory; it is no more closely related to the physical than to the physiological process; and the image or the soul of a word is as indispensable, surely, to the psychic phenomenon as to any other link in the chain.
The spoken word has no more primary connection with the alphabet than with the ideograph. The alphabet relatively is a late invention of signs with which to suggest word-sounds in writing. The alphabet performs its function principally through the sight. ”

“ so you may imagine how I felt when he brought it down, without its cover, and showed me my name in it, 'from my friend Friedrich Bhaer.'
"'You say often you wish a library: here I gif you one; for between these lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world and paint it with your pen.'
"I thanked him as well as I could, and talk now about 'my library,' as if I had a hundred books. ”

“ Truly has it been said that “The history of our alphabet is the golden thread which entwines itself with the long story of man’s civilization;” that “It is the greatest triumph of the human mind;” and again, as “The most wonderful of intellectual achievements.” For we are coming to know that letters are an invention, not spontaneous productions or miracles of language, and that evolution, as in other directions of human inquiry, has much to say upon their origin and history. ”

“ How to Converse and Discourse with any Person, without speaking a word.
This art is performed by the twenty-four letters of the alphabet on your hands and fingers, which you must learn, and then spell the words you intend your lover or friend shall know. The letters are very easily learned, and easy to remember. You must understand that most of the letters are upon the left, made with the finger of the right and left hand; with the fore-finger of the right hand you point to every letter, but sometimes that and the two next fingers make several letters, as you will hereafter find. ”

“ The illimitable range of this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when this has been said. Most articulate language addresses itself to one sense, or at most to two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular illustrations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is heard as well as read. ”

“ Just here, perhaps, I had better explain our use of the manual alphabet, which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The position of the hand is as easy to feel as it is to see. ”

“ No doubt the practical man does not want the alphabet required by the phonologist, who must denote every shade of sound and have separate symbols for the sounds heard not in English only, but in other languages as well, but the alphabet of the practical man should be based on that of the phonologist. The reformed alphabet should be one which would enable the child or the foreigner to recognize at once the sound of the word he is reading, and the philologist to determine the pronunciation of the writer. ”

“ In reality, this appears only when the signs employed represent the sounds of the language. After reaching this point, writing again presents two very different stages. Each syllable may have its particular character; or, better still, the elements of the syllable may be represented. This last form constitutes writing, properly speaking. It is this that we employ. The collection of signs we call an alphabet; and this alphabet, which constitutes the first step of elementary instruction, is certainly one of the most marvelous inventions of the human mind. ”

“ They have bestowed on us an alphabet as practically effective, and as suited to the capabilities of human vision, as any that could have been devised. This alphabet of ours is like an Englishman's dress—plain and manageable; not very artistically arranged, it may be, nor remarkable for copiousness or flow of outline, but sufficiently elastic and capable of extension. ”

“ A system of a universal alphabet has been recently proposed for telegraphic purposes, by means of which it is believed all the sounds of the human speech may be recorded and transmitted; mastering all the sounds which the human voice is capable of uttering in any language. ”

“ Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks .— designate the letter A. The marks —... designate the letter B. All the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.
Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life, (but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. ”

“ My host looked on with some interest whilst I did this, and bent his head as if in approval. Here then was the alphabet of the Martial tongue—an alphabet not arbitrary, but actually produced by the vocal sounds it represented! The elaborate machinery modifies the rough signs which are traced by the mere aerial vibrations; but each character is a true physical type, a visual image, of the spoken sound; the voice, temper, accent, sex, of a speaker affect the phonograph, and are recognisable in the record. ”

“ The origin of the word is the idea of which the word is, among other things, the symbol. That particular area of the brain which made it possible for us to utilize the symbols of our ideas became fit for the purpose, first, through gestural relationship with the motor-centers in the brain. More searching inquiry shows that in all right-handed persons the speech-center is localized in the left hemisphere of the brain; left-handed persons have it in the right. Stone implements made by early man demonstrate that we have been right-handed for many thousands of years at least. ”

“ In spite of the fact that it has been discarded from the school room and efforts made to relegate it to the past, the Sign Language is very much a live language. It is impossible for those who do not understand it to comprehend its possibilities with the deaf, its powerful influence on the moral and social happiness of those deprived of hearing, and its wonderful power of carrying thought to intellects which would otherwise be in perpetual darkness. ”

“ And when the South Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the Indispensability of Jesus. Literature, with all its hoarded wealth, is as inaccessible as the diamonds of the moon until I have mastered the alphabet. The alphabet is the golden key that unlocks to me all its treasures of knowledge, poetry and romance. ”

“ Just so, those who seek to reproduce the sounds of a language from written symbols, will be tempted to substitute similar sounds with which they are familiar for the sounds of the sketch, as, for our purpose, we may call the alphabet. Even in the case of a foreign language possessing an alphabet in some respects identical with our own, like the French, it is considered necessary to prefix to the alphabet a description of the sound intended to be conveyed by the symbol ”

“ The ultimate parts—the atoms and molecules of all literature, so to speak—are the letters of the alphabet. How often by changing a letter in a word, by reversing their order, or by substituting one letter for another, we get a word of an entirely different meaning, as in umpire and empire, petrifaction and putrefaction, malt and salt, tool and fool. And by changing the order of the words in a sentence we express all the infinite variety of ideas and meanings that the books of the world hold. ”

“ What word is there of five letters, that, by taking two away, leaves but one? Stone.
What word of one syllable, if you take two letters from it, remains a word of two syllables? Plague; ague.
Why is the letter E a gloomy and discontented vowel? Because, though never out of health and pocket, it never appears in spirits.
Why are the fourteenth and fifteenth letters of the alphabet of more importance than the others? Because we cannot get ON well without them. ”

“ No less intimate must be the connection between the auditory word-centre and the visual word-centre; they must necessarily be called into association actively in successive units of time, as in reading aloud or writing from dictation. Educated deaf mutes think with revived visual symbols either of lips or fingers. Words are to a great extent symbols whereby we carry on thought, and thinking becomes more elaborate and complex as we rise in the scale of civilisation, because more and more are verbal symbols instituted for concrete visual images. ”

“ Sounds are what we actually utter with our voices and hear with our ears when we are speaking a language. Letters are the signs which we use to represent the sounds when we are writing it down. It often happens that the letters do not represent the sounds exactly. Sometimes different sounds are represented by the same letter, sometimes the same sound is represented by different letters.
§ 6.The English and the Latin Alphabets.—The English alphabet was originally taken from the Latin alphabet, and the letters in it had the same sounds as in Latin. ”

“ The fact however remains, that in the process [51] of the development of primitive systems of writing, before the use of an alphabet, the influence of language structure upon the systems of writing is an important factor in the case.
A curious phenomenon in the history of human speech is the preference shown by certain families of language for special combinations of vowels and consonants. The simplest combination is of a single vowel with a preceding consonant in the formation of syllables. ”