120
NEW ART OF MEMORY.
universal character, which shall represent ideas directly, without the intervention of any sounds, and which may be equally understood by people using any language whatever.[1]
"To make this character effable, the Doctor (Wilkins) appropriates a single sound to the characters representing each genus and difference, and also to each variation and appendage before mentioned: and they are so contrived, that the simple sounds adapted to all the parts of the most complex character may be pronounced with ease, as one word.
"By this means any people, after they had applied this character to represent their ideas, might soon learn to read it in the same manner
- ↑ The languages of Europe have one instance of this kind of writing. Their arithmetical figures, which were derived from the Arabians, are significant marks precisely of the same nature as the universal characters above mentioned. They have no dependence on words; but each figure represents an object—represents the number for which it stands: and accordingly, on being presented to the eye, is equally understood by all the nations, who havę agreed in the use of those cyphers—by Italians, Spaniards, French and English, however different the languages of those nations are from one another, and whatever different names they give in their respective languages, to each numerical cypher.—Blair on the Belles Lett. Lect. vii.
