Suppose that we look out of a window and watch a man. Suddenly he turns his head and actively fixes his attention upon something. We look ourselves and see that his vision has been focussed upon a horse. We saw, first, the man before he acted; second, while he acted; third, the object toward which his action was directed. In speech we split up the rapid continuity of this action and of its picture into its three essential parts or joints in the right order, and say:
It is clear that these three joints, or words, are only three phonetic symbols, which stand for the three terms of a natural process. But we could quite as easily denote these three stages of our thought by symbols equally arbitrary, _which had no basis in sound_; for example, by three Chinese characters:
If we all knew _what division_ of this mental horse-picture each of these signs stood for, we could communicate continuous thought to one another as easily by drawing them as by speaking words. We habitually employ the visible language of gesture in much this same manner.
But Chinese notation is something much more than arbitrary symbols. It is based upon a vivid shorthand picture of the operations of nature. In the algebraic figure and in the spoken word there is no natural connection between thing and sign: all depends upon sheer convention. But the Chinese method follows natural suggestion. First stands the man on his two legs. Second, his eye moves through space: a bold figure represented by running legs under an eye, a modified picture of an eye, a modified picture of running legs but unforgettable once you have seen it. Third stands the horse on his four legs.
The thought picture is not only called up by these signs as well as by words but far more vividly and concretely. Legs belong to all three characters: they are _alive_. The group holds something of the quality of a continuous moving picture.
The untruth of a painting or a photograph is that, in spite of its concreteness, it drops the element of natural succession.
Contrast the Laocoon statue with Browning's lines:
"I sprang to the saddle, and Jorris, and he * * * * * * And into the midnight we galloped abreast."
One superiority of verbal poetry as an art rests in its getting back to the fundamental reality of _time_. Chinese poetry has the unique advantage of combining both elements. It speaks at once with the vividness of painting, and with the mobility of sounds. It is, in some sense, more objective than either, more dramatic. In reading Chinese we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching _things_ work out their own fate.