China and the West

Bacon, Francis. The tvoo bookes of Francis Bacon : Of the proficience and aduancement of learning : diuine and humane [ID D26974].
Er schreibt : "The organ of tradition is either speech or writing: and we see the commerce of barbarous people, that understand not one another's language, and in the practice of divers that are dumb and deaf, that men's minds are expressed in gestures. And we understand that it is the use of China to write in characters which express neither letters nor words but things or notions; insomuch as provinces, which understand not one another's language, can nevertheless read one another's writings; and therefore they have a vast multitude of characters, as many, I suppose, as radical words."