reats, to
spend a good part of their lives in copying and preserving {129} the
manuscript writings of great authors. But it was not until printing
was invented that the world of letters rapidly moved forward. Probably
about the sixth century A.D. the Chinese began to print a group of
characters from blocks, and by the tenth century they were engaged in
keeping their records in this way. Gutenberg, Faust, and others
improved upon the Chinese method by a system of movable type. But what
a wonderful change since the fourteenth century printing! Now, with
modern type-machines, fine grades of paper made by improved machinery,
and the use of immense steam presses, the making of an ordinary book is
very little trouble. Looking back over the course of events incident
to the development of the modern complex and flexible language we
observe, first, the rude picture scrawled on horn or rock. This was
followed by the representation of the sound of the name of the picture,
which passed into the mere sound sign. Finally, the relation between
the figure and the sound becomes so arbitrary that the child learns the
a, b, c as pure signs representing sounds which, in combination, make
words which stand for ideas.

_Language Is an Instrument of Culture_.--Culture areas always spread
beyond the territory of language groups. Culture depends upon the
discovery and utilization of the forces of nature through invention and
adaptation. It may spread through imitation over very large human
territory. Man has universal mental traits, with certain powers and
capacities that are developed in a relative order and in a degree of
efficiency; but there are many languages and many civilizations of high
and low degree. Through human speech the life of the past may be
handed on to others and the life of the present communicated to one
another. The physiological power of speech which exists in all permits
every human group to develop a language in accordance with its needs
and as influenced by its environment. Thus language advanced very
rapidly as an instrument of communication even at a very early period
of cultural development. A recent study of the {130} languages of the
American Indians has shown the high degree of the art of expression
among people of the Neolithic culture. This would seem to indicate
that primitive peoples are more definite in thought and more observant
in the relation of cause and effect than is usually supposed.