IN the A. V. the second commandment stands thus:

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, &c."

With regard to this translation it is to be observed, first, that according to it the worship of images only is prohibited, and not the worship of external objects, such as the sun, the moon, and the like; and secondly, that in order to justify it grammatically the reading of the text should have been

in rendering

.תְּמוּנָה instead of

פֶּסֶל synonym for

synonym for

The translation is further unfortunate by 'likeness,' as if it were merely a a graven image.' Upon examining all the passages in which occurs, it will be found, I think, that it is an abstract term, signifying 'shape, form, figure,' and therefore is not something of which it could be said 'Thou shalt not make.' It is that in an object which may be imitated, but it is not the figure made in imitation. In every case in which it occurs it may be adequately rendered by 'form,' as in Num. xii. 8; Deut. iv. 12, 15; Job iv. 16 (of the figure seen by Eliphaz); and Ps. xvii. 15 (where stands in parallelism with '). The only passages which remain are those closely connected with Ex. xx. 4, 5: they are Deut. iv. 16, 23, 25, v. 8. In all these I regard as in construction with and not in apposition to, and would render the two words, 'a graven image of (i.e. representing) any form.' In fact is

.תאר and צוּרָה תַּבְנִית to תְּמוּנָה and צֶלֶם analogous to

I would therefore translate the second commandment literally thus: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image; and (as to) any form that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, thou shalt not bow thyself down to them, nor be made to serve them, &c."

WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT.

THE JOURNAL

OF

PHILOLOGY.

ON GLOSSOLOGY.

(Continued from p. 66.)

III.

I HAVE said that by a phone I mean any sound (linguistically) significant: and I think it is best to leave the word with a degree of generality and looseness in the use of it, because the true nature of phonism is not a thing which we can at all as yet define, but is one of the principal things which it is the object of our glossological researches to determine. If we use the term 'phone,' in the first instance, of the primary significant sounds of a language, those which, if we could conceive the language in process of formation, would be the first formed, and which in a process of decomposition inversely similar to that of formation would remain, like the skeleton, longest, then such phones may be schematized into every variety of phonoschematism which forms the phonal language. Or if we use the term of these later schematisms, phones (in this sense) may be analysed, compounded, modified, into other phones, and to those which are not soluble we may give the appellations of roots, bases, &c. It is very important in settling the nomenclature we are to use not to prejudge the results of operations it is to help us in, and for that purpose it must be left general.

Journal of Philology. VOL. IV.

12

The primary phones are analysable into various sounds and articulations and if it is desired to exhibit them to the eye (that part of language which we call writing) such analysis is of course the most natural preparation for it. Hence we are led to other important investigations subordinate to the general distinction of phonism and noematism. Speaking generally, a complete examination of the human vocal organism will exhibit the whole amount of phonic power, or sum of vocal elements, possible, and the relation of these to each other: and by a converse process each actually existing utterance may be methodically analyzed, and its mechanical conditions, and the relations of its parts, determined. I am accustomed to use the term 'stomatism' in regard to investigations of this kind, for some confusion has arisen, in a way which we shall see presently, from an idea of their having a more close and necessary relation to language and linguistic writing than they really have: but many names might possibly be better.

The main importance of stomatistic investigations is with reference to writing, or the exhibition of phones to the eye: the science of writing is the second important subject subordinate to true glossology.

Any visual percept might, speaking generally, be one way or another pictorially represented to the eye, and any thing might be so represented conventionally, if the convention could be set on foot. Hence, independent of the phonism of a language, the noematism of it might be represented to the eye, or written, if we like so to call it, by symbols naturally suggesting themselves for the visual percepts, and by others agreed upon for abstract terms and those related to other senses than the eye. It might be well to call such quasi-writing or exhibition to the eye by other than vocal elements, sematism, and the symbols semes.

In the same manner of course the phonism of a language might be exhibited conventionally to the eye just like the abstract terms above, without the phones undergoing any resolution for the purpose into their vocal elements. This would be phonosematism.

But practically, writing has always been by the vocal ele

ments of the phones, represented by phonograms or letters, and arranged in what we call an alphabet. It is not however alphabetic letters only which constitute phonograms: a phonogram is any representation to the eye of a supposed or assumed vocal element, insignificant itself; any exhibition on paper of any abstracted part or element of that complicated whole which makes up the phonism of language.

The natural illustration of noematography is that solitary instance in which we all use it, the case of numerals. The Arabic numeral signs (as were the Greek) are noematosemes, i.e. they have no relation to the phonal names of the numbers in any language. The Roman numeral signs were however probably all, with the exception of that for unity and the repetitions of it, phonosemes or modifications of such.

We all run into petty noematosematism when we express anything by an abbreviation of a symbolic character, and into phonosematism when we express words by the initial letter of them. The complication of the hieroglyphic writing I suppose arises from the undistinguished mixture of these two processes (not however perhaps for abbreviation) with common phonogrammatism. A hieroglyphic symbol may be a simple phonogram or letter, united with others to represent a phone or it may be a phonoseme (probably in this case the initial phonogram representing the whole phone, as with us): or it may be a regular hieroglyphic sign or noematoseme.

The two instances which I have cited of partial noematography, the numeral signs and the hieroglyphic quasi-pictures, show the two opposite directions from which the tendency to such representation arises, and it is the inconsistency and irreconcilability of these which makes such a process unfit for general language. Mathematical relations of every kind, and all abstract relations connected with them, may very well be represented in their noematism without the intervention of phonism and so on the other hand may perceptual relations, and concrete ones connected with them (for the exceptions, with reference to senses other than sight, would be inconsiderable).

In a

:

general way, the Chinese written language has been

assumed to be a true noematography, and much ingenuity has been exercised in tracing visual dianoematism in some of its complicated semes, and even moral and historical conclusions have been thus drawn. At present more doubt seems to be entertained as to the extent or reality of this noematography. At least a great number of semes have been analysed into two parts, the one part a phonoseme (giving the pronunciation), the other a noematoseme as regards that word, but what may be the farther nature of it, I suppose, being doubtful.

Practically however writing, as I have said, has always been phonogrammatic, or by vocal elements. About this it is important to consider for a moment how much the writing has to express and how much it does express.

The phonism and the noematism, we must conclude, exactly correspond or coincide, or at least, if there is anything in the noematism which is incommunicable by the phonism, it does not properly belong to language. On the other hand, if the phonogrammatism fails to express a part of the phonism, such phonism does not therefore cease to belong to language. But phonism thus understood is an exceedingly complicated thing, involving articulation, tone, pitch, accent, and, it may be, other things, all of which go to the expression, and each one of which is susceptible of an almost infinite variety. Under these circumstances the phonogrammatism in various languages has been very various in attempt and extent.

The articulations or movements of the mouth are of course the most roughly distinguishable among the particulars mentioned above, and the most natural phonograms, or perhaps we may say the most natural alphabet or syllabarium, would consist of what we call consonants. The question whether we are to consider such phonograms as syllables including the vowels rather than as what we call letters, does not seem one of great consequence, being the same sort of question as whether we are to consider them to include the tone, the accent, &c. It is in fact the question how much of the word we are to consider as actually written in the phonograms, and how much understood.

It is evident that when a phone containing all we have mentioned above is represented by phonograms, these put together,