2. A symbol may be as definite in its signification as the arbitrary character which constitutes a letter with us, or the arbitrary character which denotes a syllable or a word with the Chinese. There is some reason to believe that the letters in most languages were at first pictures or symbols; but whether this is true or not, it is easy to conceive that such _might_ have been the case, and that as definite ideas might have been attached to the symbols employed as to the arbitrary marks or signs. Thus, it is easy to suppose that a circle, a lion, an eagle, a horse, a banner, an axe, a lamb, might have been so employed { liv} as always to denote the same thing, in the same way as the letters of the alphabet do, and thus, consequently, the number of symbols employed might have been very numerous, though still retaining their definite character.
3. The truth of these remarks has been illustrated by the recent investigations of the symbolical language or hieroglyphical signs in Egypt. On the celebrated Rosetta stone, an inscription was found in three compartments of the stone, in three different languages――the first in hieroglyphical or symbolical language, the language used by the priests; the second in _enchorical_ or _demotic_ language――the language in common use among the Egyptian people; and the third in Greek. It was conjectured that the inscription in each language was the same, and that consequently there might be a key for explaining the symbols or the hieroglyphics so common in Egypt. Acting on this suggestion, Champollion was enabled to read the inscription in the Egyptian language, and to determine the meaning of the symbols in so common use in the ancient inscriptions, and the symbolical language of Egypt became as intelligible as other ancient forms of record――as it was undoubtedly when it was at first employed. Each of the symbols had a well-known signification, and was adapted to convey a definite idea. An account of this stone, and of the symbols of Egypt generally, may be seen in Gliddon’s _Ancient Egypt_, chap. i. The symbols employed by the Hebrew prophets may have had, as used by them, as definite a meaning, and may be as susceptible of as clear an interpretation now, as the symbols employed in Egypt, or as any other language. The only real difficulty in interpreting them may have arisen from the fact that they referred to future events (see Notes on Rev. xvi. 12); the employment of such methods of writing was in accordance with the genius of the Orientals, and gave great poetic beauty to their compositions.