Memory, however, is of far less importance than a free activity of
thought, untrammelled by forms or precedents, and ever alert to novel
combinations of ideas. Give a race this and it will guide it to
civilization as surely as the needle directs the ship to its haven. It
is here that ideographic writing reveals its fatal inferiority. It is
forever specifying, materializing, dealing in minutiae. In the Egyptian
symbolic alphabet there is a figure for a virgin, another for a married
woman, for a widow without offspring, for a widow with one child, two
children, and I know not in how many other circumstances, but for
_woman_ there is no sign. It must be so in the nature of things, for the
symbol represents the object as it appears or is fancied to appear, and
not as it is _thought_. Furthermore, the constant learning by heart
infallibly leads to slavish repetition and mental servility.
A symbol when understood is independent of language, and is as
universally current as an Arabic numeral.
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