In the meantime, we find the same sound sign thus came to be used for words differing widely in sense and signification. These sound signs were still picture writing. In no sense were they letters or alphabetic characters, but pictures of objects which were used to express sound. This first stage in phonetism is therefore often called by philologists the rebus stage. A distinct illustration of this method of sound representation is given in the rebus form of the sentence, “I can sail round the globe.” Thus, the pronoun “I” is expressed by the picture of an eye; the verb “can” by the picture of a can; “sail” by the picture of a boat or ship’s sail; “round” by a circle, and the word “globe” by a student’s globe. [Illustration: The five pictures.] In this first stage of phonetism we find that pictures of objects do not represent these special objects as in the purely ideographic stage, but the sound. Again, that writing had reached the point where signs and symbols stand for entire words. For a monosyllabic language this might suffice. The necessities of a polysyllabic language, however, suggested a further advance. This was to syllabism, the second stage in phonetism, and here signs are used to represent the separate articulations of which words are composed. In an advanced stage of syllabism not all of the articulations of polysyllabic words were thus represented. Some sign attached to the word as a whole came to be used as the sound value of the initial syllable of the word. This use of signs for the initial syllable of the word is one of those tricks of abbreviation to which the human mind inclines. It is however scientifically known as an application of the acrologic principle; viz: the use of a sign primarily representing a word to denote its initial syllable, or the initial sound. Thus we have the use of the letters “C” for century; “A. D.” for Anno Domini, and other familiar examples. Also, the signs for the Phœnician words Alph, Beth, Gimel, etc., which came finally to appear as the initial letters of these words. At the same time we are to remember that at this stage these simple signs are as yet representing syllables. They do not as yet separate the vowels from the attached consonants, denoting both together by a simple sign. Nor at this stage of writing was there any conception of such a division. The vowel seems to have been regarded as inhering in the consonant. As yet no way had been devised to express the vowel sounds. We can, however, readily perceive that any attempt to treat pure syllabic signs alphabetically would be impossible. The power of the sign for Ne is not “n;” the sign for Ro is not “r;” Se, Si and Su are not “s;” nor is Tu “t.”