No More Learning

Letusgofurtherwithourexample. InEnglishwe call "to shine" a verb in the infinitive, because it gives the abstract meaning of the verb without conditions. If we want a corresponding adjective we take a different word, "bright. " If we need a noun we say "luminosity," whichisabstract,beingderivedfromanadjective. * To get a tolerably concrete noun, we have to leave behind the verb and adjective roots, and light upon a thing arbi- trarily cut off from its power of action, say "the sun" or "themoon. " Ofcoursethereisnothinginnaturesocut off, and therefore this nounizing is itself an abstraction. Even if we did have a common word underlying at once
the verb "shine," the adjective "bright" and the noun "sun," we should probably call it an "infinitive of the infinitive. " According to our ideas, it should be some- thing extremely abstract, too intangible for use.
TheChinesehaveoneword,mingormet. Itsideo- graph is the sign of the sun together with the sign of the
moon. It serves as verb, noun, adjective.
write literally, "the sun and moon of the cup" for "the cup's brightness. " Placed as a verb, you write "the cup sun-and-moons," actually "cup sun-and-moon," or in a weakened thought, "is Hke sun," i. e. , shines. "Sun-and- mooncup"isnaturallyabrightcup. Thereisnopos- sible confusion of the real meaning, though a stupid
* [A good writer would use "shine" (i. e. , to shine), shining, and "the shine" or "sheen", possibly thinking of the German "schone' and Schonheit"; but this does not invalidate Prof. Fenollosa's next contention. --E. P. ]
Thus you
? THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER 373
scholar may spend a week trying to decide what "part of speech" he should use in translating a very simple and direct thought from Chinese to English.
The fact is that almost every written Chiftese word is properly just such an underlying word, and yet it is not abstract. It is not exclusive of parts of speech, but com- prehensive; notsomethingwhichisneitheranoun,verb, or adjective, but something which is all of them at once and at all times. . Usage may incline the full meaning now a little more to one side, now to another, according to the point of view, but through all cases the poet is free to deal with it richly and concretely, as does nature.
In the derivation of nouns from verbs, the Chinese lan- guage is forestalled by the Aryan. Almost all the San- skrit roots, which seem to underlie European languages, are primitive verbs, which express characteristic actions of visible nature. The verb must be the primary fact of nature, since motion and change are all that we can rec- ognize in her. In the primitive transitive sentence, such as "Farmer pounds rice," the agent and the object are nouns only in so far as they limit a unit of action. "Farmer" and "rice" are mere hard terms which define theextremesofthepounding. Butinthemselves,apart from this sentence-function, they are naturally vei'bs. The farmer is one who tills the ground, and the rice is a plant which grows in a special way. This is indicated in the Chinese characters. And this probably exempli- fies the ordinary derivation of nouns from verbs. In all languages, Chinese included, a noun is originally "that which does something," that which performs the verbal action. Thus the moon comes from the root ma, and means"themeasurer. " Thesunmeansthatwhichbe- gets.
The derivation of adjectives from the verb need hardly
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be exemplified. Even with us, to-day, we can still watch participles passing over into adjectives. In Japanese the adjective is frankly part of the inflection of the verb, a special mood, so that every verb is also an adjective. This brings us close to nature, because everywhere the quality is only a power of action regarded as having an abstract inherence. Green is only a certain rapidity of vibration, hardness a degree of tenseness in cohering. In Chinese the adjective always retains a substratum of verbalmeaning. Weshouldtrytorenderthisintrans- lation, not be content with some bloodless adjectival ab- straction plus "is. "
Still more interesting are the Chinese "prepositions," they are often post-positions. Prepositions are so im- portant, so pivotal in European speech only because we have weakly yielded up the force of our intransitive verbs. We have to add small supernumerary words to bring back the original power. We still say "I see a horse," but with the weak verb "look," we have to add the directive particle "at" before we can restore the natural transitiveness. *
Prepositions represent a few simple ways in which in- complete verbs complete themselves. Pointing toward nouns as a limit they bring force to bear upon them. That is to say, they are naturally verbs, of generalized or condensed use. In Aryan languages it is often diffi- cult to trace the verbal origins of simple prepositions. Only in "off" do we see a fragment of the thought "to throw off. " In Chinese the preposition is frankly a verb, specially used in a generalized sense. These verbs
* [This is a bad example. We can say "I look a fool", "look", transitive, now means resemble. The main contention is however correct. We tend to abandon specific words like resemble and substitute, for them, vague verbs with prepo- sitional directors, or riders. --E. P. ]
;
? THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER 375
are often used in their specially verbal sense, and it greatly weakens an English translation if they are sys- tematically rendered by colorless prepositions.
Thus in Chinese : By = to cause ; to ^ to fall toward in =to remain, to dwell; from=to follow; and so on. Conjunctions are similarly derivative, they usually serve to mediate actions between verbs, and therefore they are necessarily themselves actions. Thus in Chi-
nese : Because = to use ; and = to be included under one another form of "and" := to be parallel ; or = to par- take; if3=toletonedo,topermit. Thesameistrueof a host of other particles, no longer traceable in the Aryan tongues.
Pronouns appear a thorn in our evolution theory, since they have been taken as unanalyzable expressions of per- sonality. In Chinese even they yield up their striking secretsofverbalmetaphor. Theyareaconstantsource of weakness if colorlessly translated. Take, for exarri- ple, th? five forms of "I. " There is the sign of a "spear inthehand"=averyemphaticI; fiveandamouth=a weak and defensive I, holding off a crowd by speaking; to conceal=a selfish and private I; self (the cocoon
sign) and a mouth = an egoistic I, one who takes pleas- ure in his own speaking; the self presented is used only when one, is speaking to one's self.
I trust that this digression concerning parts of speech may have justified itself. It proves, first, the enormous interest of the Chinese language in throwing light upon our forgotten mental processes, and thus furnishes a new chapter in the philosophy of language. Secondly, it is indispensable for understanding the poetical raw mate- rial which the Chinese language affords. Poetry differs
from prose in the concrete colors of its diction. It is not enough for it to furnish a meaning to philosophers.
t--
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1
It must appeal to emotions with the charm of direct im- pression, flashing through regions where the intellect can onlygrope. * Poetrymustrenderwhatissaid,notwhat is merely meant. Abstract meaning gives little vividness, and fullness of imagination gives all. Chinese poetry demands that we abandon our narrow grammatical cate- gories, that we follow the original text with a wealth of concrete verbs.
But this is only the beginning of the matter. So far we have exhibited the Chinese characters and the Chinese sentence chiefly as vivid shorthand pictures of actions andprocessesinnature. Theseembodytruepoetryas far as they go. Such actions are seen, but Chinese would be a poor language and Chinese poetry but a narrow art, could they not go on to represent also what is unseen. The best poetry deals not only with natural images but with lofty thoughts, spiritual suggestions and obscure re- lations. The greater part of natural truth is hidden in processes too minute for vision and in harmonies too largS, in vibrations, cohesions and in affinities. The, Chi-
nese compass these also, and with great power and beauty.
You will ask, how could the Chinese have built up a
greatintellectualfabricfrommerepicturewriting? To
the ordinary western mind, which believes that thought
is concerned with logical categories and which rather
condemns the faculty of direct imagination, this feat
seems quite impossible. Yet the Chinese language with
its peculiar materials has passed over from the seen to
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the unseen by exactly the same process which all ancient 1
races employed. This process is metaphor, the use of i|jnaterial images to suggest immaterial relations.
* [Cf. principle of Primary apparition, "Spirit of Romance". E. P. ]
t [Compare Aristotle's Poetics. --E. P. ]
j
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The whole dehcate substance of speech is built upon substrataofmetaphor. Abstractterms,pressedbyety- mology, reveal their ancient roots still embedded in di- rect action. But the primitive metaphors do not spring from arbitrary subjective processes. -^^hey are possible only becausethey follow objective liaes of relations in
''jatljreTierselfy* Relations are more real and more im-J portantthan the things which they relate. \ The forces/ which produce the branch-angles of an oaK lay potent in the acorn. Similar lines of resistance, half curbing the out-pressing vitalities, goverri the branching of rivers and of nations. Thus a nerve, a wire, a roadway, and a clearing-house are only varying channels which commu- nication forces for itself. This is more than analogy, it is identity of structure. NaBir^:fagi^fes"1iiiF'owircH^ Had the world not been full "of homologies, sympathies, and identities, thought would have been starved and languagechainedtotheobvious. Therewouldhavebeen no bridge whereby to cross from the minor truth of the seentothemajortruthoftheunseen. Notmorethana few hundred roots out of our large vocabularies could have dealt directly with physical processes. These we canfairlywellidentifyinprimitiveSanskrit. Theyare, almost without exception, vivid verbs. The wealth of European speech grew, following slowly the intricate maze of nature's suggestions and affinities. Metaphor was piled upon metaphor in quasi-geological strata.
Metaphor, the revealer of nature, is the very substance ofpoetry. Theknowninterpretstheobscure,theuni- verseisalivewithmyth. Thebeautyandfreedomofthe observed world furnish a model, and life is pregnant with art. It is a mistake to suppose, with some philos- ophers of aesthetics, that art and poetry aim to deal with the general and the abstract. This misconception has
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been foisted upon us by mediaeval logic. Art and poetry deal with the concrete of nature, not with rows of sep- arate "particulars," for such rows do not exist. Poetry is finer than prose because it gives us more concrete truthinthesamecompassofwords. Metaphor,itschief device, is at once the substance of nature and of lan- guage. Poetryonlydoesconsciously*whattheprim- itive races did unconsciously. The chief work of liter- ary men in dealing with language, and of poets especially, lies in feeling back along the ancient lines of advance. f He must do this so that he may keep his words enriched byalltheirsubtleundertonesofmeaning. Theoriginal metaphors stand as a kind of luminous background, giv- ing color and vitality, forcing them closer to the concrete- ness of natural processes. Shakespeare everywhere teemswithexamples. Forthesereasonspoetrywasthe earliestoftheworldarts poetry,languageandthecare
;
of myth grew up together.
I have alleged all this because it enables me to show
clearly why I believe that the Chinese written language has not only absorbed the poetic substance of nature and built with it a second world of metaphor, but has, through its very pictorial visibility, been able to retain its original creative poetry with far more vigor and vividness than any phonetic tongue. Let us first see how near it is to the heart of nature in its metaphors. We can watch it passing from the seen to the unseen, as we saw it pass-
* [Vide also an article on "Vorticism" in the Fortnightly Re- view for September, 1914. "The language of exploration" now in my "Gaudier-Brzeska. "--E. P. ]
t [I would submit in all humility that this applies in the rendering of ancient texts. The poet in dealing with his own time, must also see to it that language does not petrify on his hands. He must prepare for new advances along the lines of true metaphor that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as dia- metrically opposed to untrue, or ornamental metaphor. --E. P. ]
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ingfromverbtopronoun. Itretainstheprimitivesap, it is not cut and dried like a walking-stick. We have been told that these people are cold, practical, mechani- cal, literal, and without a trace of imaginative genius. That is nonsense.
Our ancestors built the accumulations of metaphor into structures of language and into systems of thought. Languages to-day are thin and cold because we think lessandlessintothem. Weareforced,forthesakeof quickness and sharpness, to file down each word to its narrowestedgeofmeaning. Naturewouldseemtohave become less like a paradise and more and more like a factory. We are content to accept the vulgar misuse of the moment. A late stage of decay is arrested and em- balmed in the dictionary. Only scholars and poets feel painfully back along the thread of our etymologies and piece together our diction, as best they may, from for- gotten fragments. This anemia of modern speech is only too well encouraged by the feeble cohesive force of our phonetic symbols. There is little or nothing in a phonetic word to exhibit the embryonic stages of its growth. It does not bear its metaphor on its face. We
forget that personality once meant, not the soul, but the soul's mask. This is the sort of thing one can not pos- sibly forget in using the Chinese symbols.
In this Chinese shows its advantage. Its etymology is constantly visible. It retains the creative impulse and process, visible and at work. After thousands of years the lines of metaphoric advance are still shown, and in many cases actually retained in the meaning. Thus a word, instead of growing gradually poorer and poorer as with us, becomes richer and still more rich from age to age, almost consciously luminous. Its uses in national philosophy and history, in biography and in
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poetry, throw about it a nimbus of meanings. These centreaboutthegraphicsymbol. Thememorycanhold themandusethem. TheverysoilofChineselifeseems entangled in the roots of its speech. The manifold il- lustrations which crowd its annals of personal experi- ence, the lines of tendency which converge upon a tragic climax, moral character as the very core of the principle --all these are flashed at once on the mind as reinforc- ing values with an accumulation of meaning which a phonetic language can hardly hope to attain. Their ideo- graphs are like blood-stained battle flags to an old cam- paigner. With us, the poet is the only one for whom the accumulated treasures of the race-words are real and active. Poetic language is always vibrant with fold on fold of overtones, and with natural affinities, but in Chi- nese the visibility of the metaphor tends to raise this
quality to its intensest power.
I have mentioned the tyranny of mediaeval logic. Ac-
cording to this European logic thought is a kind of brick- yard. It is baked into little hard units or concepts. These are piled in rows according to size and then labeled with words for future use. This use consists in picking out a few bricks, each by its convenient label, and stick- ing them together into a sort of wall called a sentence by the use either of white mortar for the positive copula "is," or of black mortar for the negative copula "is not. " In this way we produce such admirable propositions as "A ring-tailed baboon is not a constitutional assembly. "
Let us consider a row of cherry trees. From each of these in turn we proceed to take an "abstract," as the phrase is, a certain common lump of qualities which we may express together by the name cherry or cherry-ness. Next we place in a second table several such character- istic concepts: cherry, rose, sunset, iron-rust, flamingo.
? THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER 381
From these we abstract some further common quality, dilutation or mediocrity, and label it "red" or "redness. " It is evident that this process of abstraction may be car- ried on indefinitely and with all sorts of material. We may go on forever building pyramids of attenuated con- cept until we reach the apex "being. "
But we have done enough to illustrate the character- istic process. At the base of the pyramid lie things, but stunned, as it were. They can never know themselves for things until they pass up and down among the layers ofthepyramids. Thewayofpassingupanddownthe pyramid may be exemplified as follows : We take a con- ceptoflowerattenuation,suchas"cherry"; weseethat it is contained under one higher, such as "redness. " Then we are permitted to say in sentence form, "Cherryness is contained under redness," or for short, "(the) cherry is red. " If, on the other hand, we do not find our chosen subject under a given predicate we use the black copula and say, for example, "(The) cherry is not liquid. "
From this point we might go on to the theory of the syllogism, but we refrain. It is enough to note that the practised logician finds it convenient to store his mind with long lists of nouns and adjectives, for these are nat- urally the names of classes. Most text-books on lan- guage begin with such lists. The study of verbs is meagre, for in such a system there is only one real work- ing verb, to-wit, the quasi-verb "is.
" All other verbs can be transformed into participles and gerunds. For ex- ample, "to run" practically becomes a case of "running. " Instead of thinking directly, "The man runs," our logi- cian makes two subjective equations, namely: The indi- vidual in question is contained under the class "man"; and the class "man" is contained under the class of "run- ning things. *'
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The sheer loss and weakness of this method is appar- ent and flagrant. Even in its own sphere it can not think half of what it wants to think. It has no way of bring- ing together any two concepts which do not happen to standoneundertheotherandinthesatiiepyramid. It is impossible to represent change in this system or any kind of growth. This is probably why the conception of evolution came so late in Europe. It could not make "way until it was prepared to destroy the inveterate logic of classification.
Far worse than this, such logic can not deal with any kind of interaction or with any multiplicity of function. According to it, the function of my muscles is as isolated from the function of my nerves, as from an earthquake in the moon. For it the poor neglected things at the bases of the pyramids are only so many particulars or pawns.
Science fought till she got at the things. All her work has been done from the base of the pyramids, not from the apex. She has discovered how functions cohere in things. She expresses her results in grouped sentences which embody no nouns or adjectives but verbs of spe- cial character. The true formula for thought is: The cherry tree is all that it does. Its correlated verbs com- pose it. At bottom these verbs are transitive. Such verbs may be almost infinite in number.
In diction and in grammatical form science is utterly opposed to logic. Primitive men who created language agreed with science and not with logic. Logic has abused the language which they left to her mercy. Poetry agrees with science and not with logic.
The moment we use the copula, the moment we express subjectiveinclusions,poetryevaporates. Themorecon- cretely and vividly we express the interactions ot things
? THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER
thebetterthepoetry. Weneedinpoetrythousandsof active words, each doing its utmost to show forth the motiveandvitalforces. Wecannotexhibitthewealth of nature by mere summation, by the piling of sentences. (Poeticjho^ught works _by suggestion, crowding maximum meaning into the single phrase pregnant, charged, and
^~"
luminous from within.
In Chinese character each work accumulated this sort
of energy in itself.
Should we pass formally to the study of Chinese
poetry, we should warn ourselves against logicianized pitfalls. We should beware of modern narrow utilita- rian meanings ascribed to the words in commercial dic- tionaries. We should try to preserve the metaphoric overtones. We should beware of English grammar, its hard parts of speech, and its lazy satisfaction with nouns and adjectives. We should seek and at least bear in mind the verbal undertone of each noun. We should avoid "is" and bring in a wealth of neglected English verbs. Most of the existing translations violate all of these rules. *
The development of the normal transitive sentence rests upon the fact that one action in nature promotes another; thustheagentandtheobjectaresecretlyverbs. For example, our sentence, "Reading promotes writing," would be expressed in Chinese by three full verbs. Such a form is the equivalent of three expanded clauses and can be drawn out into adjectival, participial, infinitive, relative or conditional members. One of many possible examples is, "If one reads it teaches him how to write. " Another is, "One who reads becomes one who writes. "
* [These precautions should be broadly conceived. It is not so much their letter, as the underlying feeling of objectifiea- tion and activity, that matters. --E. P. ]
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But in the first condensed form a Chinese would write, "Read promote write. " The dominance of the verb and its power to obliterate all other parts of speech give us the model of terse fine style.
I have seldom seen our rhetoricians dwell on the fact ' that the great strength of our language lies in its splendid array of transitive verbs, drawn both from Anglo-Saxon and from Latin sources. These give us the most indi- / vidual characterizations of force. Their power lies in K^^eir recognition of nature as a vast storehouse of forces. We do not say in English that things seem, or appear, or eventuate, or even that they are ; but that they do. Will is the foundation of our speech. * We catch the Demi- urge in the act. I had to discover for myself why Shakespeare's English was so immeasurably superior to
all others. I found that it was his persistent, natural, and magnificent use of hundreds of transitive verbs. Rarely will you find an "is" in his sentences. "Is" weakly lends itself to the uses of our rhythm, in the un- accented syllables; yet he sternly discards it. A study of Shakespeare's verbs should underlie all exercises in style.
We find in poetical Chinese a wealth of transitive verbs, in some way greater even than in the English of Shakespeare. Thisspringsfromtheirpowerofcombin- ing several pictorial elements in a single character.
We have in English no verb for what two things, say the sun and moon, both do together. Prefixes and affixes merely direct and qualify. In Chinese the verb can be more minutely qualified. We find a hundred variants cluster- ing about a single idea. Thus "to sail a boat-for pur- poses of pleasure" would be an entirely different verb
* [Compare Dante's definition of ? 'rectitude" as the direction of the will, probably taken from Aquinas. --E, P. ]
? THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER 385
from "to sail for purposes of commerce. " Dozens of Chinese verbs express various shades of grieving, yet in English translations they are usually reduced to one mediocrity. Many of them can be expressed only by periphrasis, but what right has the translator to neglect the overtones? There are subtle shadings. We should strain our resources in English.
It is true that the pictorial clue of many Chinese ideo- graphs can not now be traced, and even Chinese lexicog- raphers admit that combinations frequently contribute only a phonetic value. But I find it incredible that any such minute subdivision of the idea could have ever ex- isted alone as abstract sound without the concrete char- acter. It contradicts the law of evolution. Complex ideas arise only gradually, as the power of holding them together arises. The paucity of Chinese sound could not so hold them. Neither is it conceivable that the whole list was made at once, as commercial codes of cipher are compiled. Therefore we must believe that thephonetictheoryisinlargepartunsound. Themeta- phor once existed in many cases where we can not now trace it. Many of our own etymologies have been lost. It is futile to take the ignorance of the Han dynasty for omniscience. * It is not true, as Legge said, that the
* [Professor FenoUosa is well borne out by chance evidence. The vorticist sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska sat in my room be- fore he went off to the war. He was able to read the Chi- nese radicals and many compound signs almost at pleas- ure. He was of course, used to consider all life and na- ture in the terms of planes and of bounding lines. Neverthe- less he had spent only a fortnight in the museum studying the Chinese characters. He was amazed at the stupidity of lexi- cographers who could not discern for all their learning the pictorial values which were to him perfectly obvious and ap- parent. Curiously enough, a few weeks later Esmond Dulac, who is of a totally different tradition, sat here, giving an im-
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original picture characters could never have gone far in building up abstract thought. This is a vital mistake. We have seen that our own languages have all sprung from a few hundred vivid phonetic verbs by figurative derivation. A fabric more vast could have been built upinChinesebymetaphoricalcomposition. Noattenu- ated idea exists which it might not have reached more vividly and more permanently than we could have been expected to reach with phonetic roots. Such a pictorial method, whether the Chinese exemplified it or not, would be the ideal language of the world.
Still, is it not enough to show that Chinese poetry gets back near to the processes of nature by means of itsvividfigure,itswealthofsuchfigure? Ifweattempt to follow it in English we must use words highly charged, words whose vital suggestion shall interplay as nature
i^ interplays. Sentences must be like the mingling of the fringes of feathered banners, or as the colors of many flowers blended into the single sheen of a meadow.
The poet can never see too much or feel too much. His metaphors are only ways of getting rid of the dead white plaster of the copula. He resolves its indiffer- ence into a thousand tints of verb. His figures flood things with jets of various light, like the sudden up-blaze of fountains. The prehistoric poets who created lan- guage discovered the whole harmonious framework of nature,theysangoutherprocessesintheirhymns. And
promptu panegyric on the elements of Chinese art, on the units of composition, drawn from the written characters. He did not use Professor Fenollosa's own words, he said "bam- boo" instead of 'rice". He said the essence of the bamboo is in a certain way it grows, they have this in their sign for bamboo, all designs of bamboo proceed from it. Then he went on rather to disparage vorticism, on the grounds that it could not hope to do for the Occident, in one life-time, what had required centuries of development in China. --E. P. ]
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this diilused poetry which they created, Shakespeare has condensed into a more tangible substance. Thus in all poetry a word is like a sun, with its corona and chro- mosphere; words crowd upon words, and enwrap each other in their luminous envelopes until sentences become clear, continuous light-bands.
Now we are in condition to appreciate the full splen- dor of certain lines of Chinese verse. Poetry surpasses prose especially in that the poet selects for juxtaposition those words whose overtones blend into a delicate and lucid harmony. All arts follow the same law; refined harmony lies in the delicate balance of overtones. In music the whole possibility and theory of harmony is based on the overtones. In this sense poetry seems a more difficult art.
How shall we determine the metaphorical overtones of neighboring words? We can avoid flagrant breaches likemixedmetaphor. Wecanfindtheconcordorhar- monizing at its intensest, as in Romeo's speech over the dead Juliet.
Here also the Chinese ideography has its advantage, in even a simple line, for example, "The sun rises in the east. "
The overtones vibrate against the eye. The wealth of composition in characters makes possible a choice of words in which a single dominant overtone colors every plane of meaning. That is perhaps the most conspicu- ous quality of Chinese poetry. Let us examine our line.
,4- ^ ^Sun N" Rises (in the) East
\ \
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The sun, the shining, on one side, on the other the sign of the east, which is the sun entangled in the branches of a tree. And in the middle sign, the verb "rise," we have further homology; the sun is above the horizon, but beyond that the single upright line is like the grow- ing trunk-line of the tree sign. This is but a beginning, but it points a way to the method, and to the method of intelUgent reading.