An instance is on record where an Indian sang two hundred on various subjects.[18-1] Such a fact reminds us of a beautiful expression of the elder Humboldt: "Man," he says, "regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species; but his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated at the public schools of ancient Mexico--for that realm, so far from neglecting the cause of popular education, established houses for gratuitous instruction, and to a certain extent made the attendance upon them obligatory--learned by rote long orations, poems, and prayers with a facility astonishing to the conquerors, and surpassing anything they were accustomed to see in the universities of Old Spain.

A phonetic system actually weakens the retentive powers of the mind by offering a more facile plan for preserving thought.

"_Ce que je mets sur papier, je remets de ma memoire_" is an expression of old Montaigne which he could never have used had he employed ideographic characters.
Memory, however, is of far less importance than a free activity of thought, untrammelled by forms or precedents, and ever alert to novel combinations of ideas.

Give a race this and it will guide it to civilization as surely as the needle directs the ship to its haven.

It is here that ideographic writing reveals its fatal inferiority.