Hieratic script

“ The Phœnicians and Hebrews are supposed to have borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieratic writing; and in the transition the irregular character of the markings of the reed pen on papyrus disappeared and monumental regularity took its place, as nearly all of the early Phœnician and Hebrew writing was in the form of inscriptions on stone and metal. But in this transition the letters did not revert to the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol, but simply became an angular, simplified form of the hieratic, so that the A became a V or caret-like form with a line crossing it. ”

“ Every system of classification ought to be formed on the principles of the Logical Alphabet. Each superior class should be divided into two inferior classes, distinguished by the possession and non-possession of a single specified difference. Each of these minor classes, again, is divisible by any other quality whatever which can be suggested, and thus every classification logically consists of an infinitely extended series of subaltern genera and species. ”

“ The first essential of such a system is Legibility, the most important factor in any system of shorthand for any language. For, without Legibility, the representation is incomplete, and if it is incomplete it is not a representation in any proper sense. The proposed system should, therefore, possess this attribute, ab initio. Its materials should be so chosen as to maintain legibility always. Rapidity of work resulting in the formation of strokes only partially resembling what they are intended to be, and in similar characters with different imports, should not make the writing illegible. ”

“ The division of words when the words do not exactly fit the register of the line has always been a source of trouble. In the days of the manuscript makers devices such as crowding letters, reducing their size, or omitting them altogether were freely used and words were arbitrarily divided when the scribes so desired. During the greater part of the time every scribe divided as he pleased, often in ways which seem very strange to us, like the Greek custom of dividing always after a vowel and even dividing words of one syllable. ”

“ To construct a sentence with many loosely and not obviously dependent clauses, each clause containing an important meaning or a concrete image the vivacity of which, like a boulder in a shallow stream, disturbs the equable current of thought, and in such a case the more beautiful the image the greater the obstacle, so that the laws of simplicity and economy are violated by it,—while each clause really requires for its interpretation a proposition that is however kept suspended till the close, is a defect. ”

“ The division into nouns and verbs, articles and conjunctions, the schemes of declension and conjugation, were a merely artificial network thrown over the living body of language. We must not look in the grammar of Dionysius Thrax for a correct and well-articulated skeleton of human speech. ”

“ If the reasoning in our discussion on the differentiation of the comma from the semicolon, be correct, it seems to establish a rule that the semicolon is the mark of choice between two clauses, whether joined by a conjunction or not. It is not entirely the length or the character of the groups of words that determines the choice. The liability to make wrong combinations, especially such combinations as are suggested by the apparent meaning of the language, is to be lessened by the mark. ”

“ Where a minority consists of one document or hardly more, there is a valid presumption against the reading thus attested, because any one scribe is liable to err, whereas the fortuitous concurrence of a plurality of scribes in the same error is in most cases improbable ”

“ Competition shifted from the realm of nature-man against nature-to the realm of humanity. Once the element of comparison to the other, or judgment by others, was introduced, hierarchy was established. Hierarchy put on record became, with the advent of notation, and more so with the advent of writing, a component of experience, one of its structuring elements. It is no longer a here-and-now defined action of immediacy, but action expanded as progression over generations and societies, and among various societies. ”

“ Except by conjecture, which does not concern us here, no scribe can make a text better than he found it; his highest merit is to leave it no worse. The inherited text of a document must therefore have been usually better, never worse, than the text which it actually presents to the eye; and the character of the inherited text is inevitably disguised for the worse by every 'individualism' which remains undetected.
311. Individualisms may obviously belong to various types, from purely clerical errors to alterations of purely mental origin. ”

“ Unfortunately for the proof-reader, Style seldom writes his laws; or, if at any time written, their visible form presently perishes, and they can only be got at, as one may learn the common law of England, through past decisions. You, my young friend, may in vain consult old proofs; works formerly read, at the desk you now occupy, by some vanished predecessor. Your searching cannot help you much; for authors being without the jurisdiction, are independent of the authority, of Style,—they may allow him to dominate over their works, or they may not. ”

“ In a purely scientific view it matters little if the Orders are converted into Classes or Alliances, the Genera into Orders, and the Sections or Subsections into Genera: their relative importance does not depend on the names given to them, but on their height in the scale of comprehensiveness. But for language, the great implement without which science cannot work, it is of the greatest importance, as our Aphorism declares, That the groups which give their substantive names to every species which they include, should remain large. ”

“ In assuming the existence of comparable types, therefore, we are not gainsaying the individuality of all historical processes; we are merely affirming that back of the face of history are powerful drifts that move language, like other social products, to balanced patterns, in other words, to types. ”

“ The hierarchical organization of society was faithfully reflected in the conventional organization of language,—in the ordination of pronouns, nouns, and verbs,—in the grades conferred upon adjectives by prefixes or suffixes. With the same merciless exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life, all utterance was regulated both negatively and positively,—but positively much more than negatively. ”

“ Crucially, merge can apply to the results of its own output so that a further application of merge to ate and {the, apples} yields the set {ate, {the, apples}}, in this way deriving the full range of characteristic hierarchical structure that distinguishes human language from all other known nonhuman cognitive systems. ”

“ Lines of type are easier handled by the aid of a composing rule. It is not practicable to set small types in the stick without some support or to set a second line immediately next to another without a lead or rule to separate them. The composing rule furnishes a smooth surface against which to place the types as they are assembled and to keep them in line while the respacing and justifying is done. The rule is also convenient for lifting lines out into the galley and for handling them in later operations. ”

“ But, judging from our experience in proof-reading, the endeavor has thus far been unsuccessful. The adjective, the {p187} dis­tin­guish­ing word, always begins with a capital; as in “Bristol county,” “Atlantic ocean.” The rule then, formulated, amounts to this: “Put the dis­tin­guish­ing word up, and the class name down.” But usage will not allow this; we must not write “Long island,” “James smith,”—wherefore the rule has this qualification: “If the dis­tin­guish­ing word alone does not clearly designate the object, both words must be put up.” ”

“ All construction is the ascertainment of meaning. And literalness may strangle meaning. But in construing a definite procedural provision we do well to stick close to the text and not import argumentative qualifications from broad, unexpressed claims of policy. Insofar as such considerations are relevant here, however, they tell against cutting down the natural meaning of the language Congress chose. ”

“ As has been seen, the theory of Incorporation is to express the whole proposition, as nearly as possible, in one word; and what part of it cannot be thus expressed, is left without any syntax whatever. Not only does this apply to individual words in a sentence, but it extends to the various clauses of a compound sentence, such as in Aryan languages show their relation to the leading clauses by means of prepositions, conjunctions and relative pronouns. ”

“ For it cannot be supposed, that any nation should be so far destitute of language, as not to have words for common objects, and internal feelings; or having these, that they should lay them entirely aside, and adopt the artificial names of the marks representing those objects and ideas in their steads. But they might easily adopt names, simple or compound, at first ascribed artificially to marks, whose objects and ideas had before this adoption no names. ”

“ Thus in our first example the antecedent leaves us to select from the general class of 'men', the defining clause fixes the particular man (presumably the only man, or the only man that would occur in the connexion) 'who called yesterday'. Sometimes, however, the functions of the two are reversed. When we have an antecedent with a superlative, or other word of exclusive or comprehensive meaning, such as 'all', 'only ', 'any', we know already how to make our selection, and only wait for the relative clause to tell us from what class to make it. ”

“ Examination of the columnar tables of attestation, by bringing to light approximate uniformities affecting particular books or writers, or collocations of letters or words, and the like, has often shown that an exceptional smallness or largeness of evidence has been probably due to accident. On the other hand it would be unreasonable to assume that the same writer, even in the same book, always spells a word in the same way. Absolute uniformity belongs only to artificial times ”

“ They forced the hierarchy to recognize the existence of something higher without it and above it, and also to learn to respect the right of men to form their own opinions and to give utterance to them. ”

“ Formal correctness requires that the last term in such a series should be negative. We have here to keep the term 'not-red' open, to cover any blue or green men that might turn up. It is only experience that enables us to substitute the positive term 'yellow' for 'not-red,' since we know as a matter of fact that there are no men but those of the five colours given in the original division.
§ 415. Any correct logical division always admits of being arrived at by the longer process of division and subdivision by dichotomy. ”

“ It is a fundamental principle in logic, that the power of framing classes is unlimited, as long as there is any (even the smallest) difference to found a distinction upon. Take any attribute whatever, and if some things have it, and others have not, we may ground on the attribute a division of all things into two classes; and we actually do so, the moment we create a name which connotes the attribute. ”

“ On the other hand, wherever a text is found in a plurality of documents, there is a strong probability that some of them are descended from a single lost original. The proof of common descent is always essentially the same, consisting in numerous readings in which they agree among themselves and differ from all other documents, together with the easy deducibility, direct or indirect, of all their readings from a single text. ”

“ Now a code should, as I take it, like the scientific classification of any other subject-matter, combine this with intellectual excellence at the opposite pole. The scientific classification, when once made, should appear, as the botanists say, to be natural, not artificial. If fully successful, it should seem as if it could not but have been made, or as if it made itself. Every subdivision should fall spontaneously into its right place without violence or distortion. ”

“ Authorities are not given and we do not find systematic footnotes, nor even ordinary citations of authorities in the text. We have nothing better than our own guess to enable us to decide whether the compiler is giving us the fruit of original research, an extract from another compilation, unsupported tradition, or a mere conjecture. ”

“ Such a complete and exact division is called classification.
Nearly every term may be divided according to more than one principle. We may divide the term books into ancient and modern, or into religious and secular, or in any one of a dozen other ways. Which principle of division we shall choose will depend upon our purpose. If we wish to discuss sponges with reference to their shapes, our division will be different from what it would be if we were to discuss them with reference to their uses. When a principle of division has once been chosen it is essential that it be followed throughout. ”