Picture-writing differs from picturing in that it aims at conveying to the mind, not a representation of an event, but a narrative of the event in words, each word being represented by a picture. The distinction is of immense importance. The step from the former to the latter is one of the greatest which mankind has ever made in the course of its progress in civilization. When the step had been made the road toward the acquisition of a regular alphabet lay _comparatively_ open. It was still beset with difficulties, but none so great as the difficulty of making this particular step. Let us try and fully understand this. We will take a sentence and see how it might be conveyed by the two methods. _A man slew a lion with a bow and arrows while the sun went down._ Picturing would show the man with a drawn bow in his hand, the lion struck by the arrow, the sun on the horizon. Picture-writing would present a series of little pictures and symbols dealing separately with each word--a man, a symbol for ‘slew,’ say a hand smiting, a lion, a connecting symbol for ‘with,’ and so on. We see at once how much more elaborate and exact the second method is, and that it makes the telling of a continuous story possible. We also discover that these various stages of writing correspond to developments of language, and that as languages grow in capacity to express nobler thoughts, a greater stress will be put upon invention to render the more recondite words by pictures and symbols, till at last language will outgrow all possibility of being so rendered, and another method of showing words to the eye will have to be thought of--for all languages at least that attain their full development. That a great deal may be expressed by pictures and symbols, however, we learn from the picturing and picture-writing of past races that have come down to us, and from the present writing of the Chinese, who with their radical language have preserved the pictorial character that well accords with an early stage of language.