If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression--of whose frame
the stars are the infinite molecules--can be supposed ever to interfere
with the laws of matter and reach down into the doings of men, would it
not be to save from the wreck and waste of time the most sublime fruit
of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis--a belief in the one, only,
just God, the father of all life, the imposer of all moral obligations?
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
One of the most marvellous inventions for the advancement of mankind is
the phonetic alphabet, or a system of signs representing the sounds of
human speech. Without it our present civilization could scarcely have
been possible.
No solution of the origin of our European alphabet has yet been
obtained: we can trace it back from nation to nation, and form to form,
until we reach the Egyptians, and the archaic forms of the Phoenicians,
Hebrews, and Cushites, but beyond this the light fails us.
The Egyptians spoke of their hieroglyphic system of writing not as their
own invention, but as "the language of the gods." (Lenormant and Cheval,
"Anc. Hist. of the East," vol.
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