All writing commences with a symbol or line which, considered as a whole, is a pure characterization of the individual. Either the line is horizontal, like all things which, in simply conforming to the laws of their being, find sufficient reason for existence; or it is vertical, like the tree and the man, indicating acts and laying down affirmations; or, if oblique, it marks movement and the senses. The Roman letter has had the vertical line for its principle; the Chinese character seems to have the horizontal as its essential trait. The letter with an imperious downstroke affirms that a thing is so; the character is the very thing that it signifies. One symbol or another is equally a sign. Let us take figures for example. They are all equally abstract images, but the letter is essentially analytic. Each word is an enunciation of successive affirmations that the eye and the voice spell out. Unit is added to unit on the same line, and the Protean syllable changes and is modified in a continual variation. But the Chinese sign develops the figure, and, applying it to a series of beings, it differentiates their characters indefinitely. A word exists by a succession of letters, a character by the relation of its strokes. May we not imagine that in these the horizontal line indicates, for example, the species; the vertical, the individual; the oblique, diverse of movement, that group of traits and energies which gives meaning to the whole; the period, distinct on the white page, signifying something that can only be implied? One can therefore see in the Chinese character a completely developed being, a written person, having, like a person who lives, his nature and his moods, his own acts and his inner individuality, his structure and physiognomy. This explains the piety with which the Chinese regard writing. They burn with respect the humblest paper marked with a vestige of this mystery. The sign is a being; and, from the fact that it is common to all, it becomes sacred. With them the representation of ideas is almost an idol. Such is the foundation of that scriptural religion which is peculiar to China. Yesterday I visited a Confucian temple. It was in a solitary quarter where everything spoke of desertion and decay. In the silence and burning heat of the sun at three o’clock, we followed the sinuous street. Our entrance is not to be by the great door where the proud rot in their enclosure, where that high column marked with an official inscription in two languages guards the worn sill. A woman, short and round-backed as a pig, opens a side passage for us; and, with echoing footfalls, we penetrate into the deserted court.