The Perception of the Chinese Language by the “King’s Mathematicians” in the Age of Enlightenment

Louis Le Comte « Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine », 1696

The motive is the same for other missionaries, if we are to believe Father Chavagnac. On February 10, 1703, he told Father Gobien: “ […] As for the language of the country, I can assure you that it is only for God that one can take the trouble to learn it […]”^[4] So, for Louis Le Comte as for Father Chavagnac, and for all these missionaries, the study of Chinese is simply a means of spreading the message of Jesus Christ. The difficulties are real, yet some French missionaries are more optimistic. Le Comte seems to minimize the difficulty of the language and is astonished by Father Magalhaens’ attitude:

[…] I don’t understand why anyone should feel otherwise when they have spent some time in China; and I confess I was surprised to read in Father Magalhaens’ new report that the Chinese language is easier than Greek, Latin and all the other languages of Europe. He adds that this cannot be doubted, if we consider that as the difficulty in languages comes from memory, we have almost no difficulty in this one, which has very few words compared with the others, and which we can learn in a day. Reasoning like this Father, music should only cost us an hour. Seven words and seven tones do not burden the memory very much, and provided one has a flexible voice, it seems that there is no great difficulty in learning them […].^[5]

Louis Le Comte’s comments on his colleague’s optimism seem exaggerated. At the very least, it shows that Father Magalhaens’ attitude is more objective, for his confidence is based on extensive experience in comparing languages. When it comes to studying Chinese, Joseph de Prémare is the most active of all. Ever since he arrived in China, he has applied himself to the study of the Chinese language and literature, which he considers indispensable to the understanding of China and the success of evangelization. Instead of complaining about the difficulties of Chinese, he sought to establish grammatical rules, with encouraging results. In a letter to Father Le Gobien, he expresses his optimism:

[…] But now that I am beginning to know this country, and that God has given me the grace to learn in such a short time enough Chinese to hear more or less what is said, and to make heard what I want to say […]^[6]

We know that during his long stay in China, Father de Prémare applied himself to the study of Chinese and classical literature. Missionary that he was, he devoted less time to conversion than to the study and translation of Chinese books. His Notitia linguae Sinicae, containing a large number of examples and testifying to his in-depth knowledge of the language, was considered a benchmark in Chinese grammar. In 1728, Josephe de Prémare sent his manuscripts to France in the hope of having them published. The author’s aim was to provide a Chinese textbook for future missionaries. Despite his efforts, his manuscripts were long forgotten at the Royal Library. However, his work was not in vain, as it has been established that Fourmont, author of a Chinese grammar, used it as the basis for his Linguae Sinarum mandarinnicae hieroglyphicae grammectica duplex, published in 1742.

Etienne Fourmont, Linguae Sinarum mandarinnicae hieroglyphicae grammectica duplex, 1742

It is fair to say that the features of Chinese revealed in this book, having already been mentioned by Matteo Ricci in his History of the Christian Expedition to the Kingdom of China, are not exactly unknown to European readers. Nevertheless, this experience of studying Chinese, added to previous knowledge, the originality of the reflections, and the explanations contained therein, helped Europeans to advance their knowledge of Chinese writing. Despite these very different opinions, their impression of Chinese can be summed up in one word: “difficult,” and this judgment, due to their imperfect knowledge of the language, made a deep impression on European readers for centuries to come, right up to the present day.

This impression, common to all these missionaries, lies above all in the difficulty of pronunciation and the large number of Chinese characters. Firstly, several missionaries explained the monosyllabic nature of Chinese, which is totally different from that of European languages. When Le Comte presents the number of syllables, he points out that “[…] this language contains only three hundred and thirty words or thereabouts, all of one syllable, or at least pronounced so tightly that one almost never distinguishes but one; though it is a boring thing to read the whole succession of them […]”^[7] It is of course an exaggeration to say that Chinese “contains only three hundred words or so […]”; besides, according to Father, this “poverty” of Chinese is tempered by the addition of tones, which multiplied the words, as Le Comte again says:

[…] These few words would not be enough to explain with ease all kinds of matters, to provide for the sciences and the arts, to sustain eloquence in speech and in works, which is among the Chinese very different, if we had not found the art of multiplying meaning without multiplying words. This art consists particularly in the different accents given to words. The same word pronounced with a stronger or weaker voice inflection has different meanings. So, the Chinese language, when spoken accurately, is a kind of music, and contains a real harmony that makes up its essence and particular character. There are five tones which apply to each word, according to the meaning we wish to give it […] by this difference in pronunciation, from three hundred and thirty-three words we make sixteen hundred and sixty-five […]^[8]

Le Comte’s opinion of spoken Chinese is not a positive one, and his opinion is shared by the other missionaries, who note that a poor command of syllabic tones can lead to ambiguity in communication, an ambiguity reinforced by the abundance of homophones. They understood that in Chinese, learning tones is essential from the outset, which can make things relatively easy for a foreigner, as Le Comte puts it:

[…] In this language, tone is everything. Here again is what makes the Chinese language more difficult than others. When an uneducated foreigner speaks French, for a few words that he pronounces well, we can easily guess the others that he says badly, and we can hear him; but in China, a single badly pronounced word is usually enough to make the whole sentence unintelligible; and a sentence at the beginning of a speech that is badly heard often prevents us from understanding the rest of it […]^[9]

The variety of tones in Chinese is indeed a difficulty for foreigners, so much so that François Bourgeois compares it to “a pitfall for any European”:^[10]

[…] I was told chou means book. I was counting on the fact that every time the word chou came up, I’d be able to conclude that it meant a book. Not at all, chou comes back, it means a tree. Here I am, torn between chou book and chou tree. There’s chou hot weather, chou tell, chou aurora, chou rain, chou charity, chou accustomed, chou loose a challenge, and so on. I wouldn’t finish if I wanted to report all the meanings of the same word […]^[11]

It seems that the number of homophones in the Chinese language is “an insurmountable difficulty”^[12] for him. As he had no understanding of the Chinese pronunciation system either, his interpretation could only add to the complexity of the language by exaggerating it:

[…] I recited my sermon at least fifty times in front of my servant, before saying it in public. I gave him full power to correct me, and never tired of repeating. There are some of my Chinese listeners who, of ten parts, as they say, have only heard three. Fortunately, the Chinese are patient, and are always amazed that a poor foreigner can learn two words of their language […]^[13]

Because of his imperfect command of tones or accents, his preaching was therefore incomprehensible to Chinese listeners, so that he was discouraged. The terms he uses are a little excessive, suggesting that he was getting tired of learning Chinese.

Still on the subject of spoken Chinese, Louis Le Comte was under the impression that there were also ambiguities of meaning between the Chinese, despite the tones, and that they had to “write” the words in space, and therefore use sign language to make themselves understood:

[…] I have seen doctors who, in order to get along in familiar conversations, were obliged to form in the air with their finger the particular letter that expressed their words, whose meaning could not be determined by pronunciation […]^[14]

For Le Comte, these “inconveniences” of spoken Chinese are the consequence of the fact that the Chinese, throughout the centuries, never ceased to perfect the written language and neglected the oral, “[…] eloquence does not consist in a certain periodic arrangement, such as our orators affect, who to impose on the listener sometimes embarrass him with many words, because they don’t have many things to tell him […].”^[15] Louis Le Comte, like others before and after him, observing the gulf that exists between written and spoken language, seems to lose his footing in the face of the complexity of the rules of written Chinese:

[…] One does not speak as one writes, the most polite speech is barbaric and shocking as soon as it is printed. To write well, one must use more select terms, nobler expressions, and particular turns of phrase that are not part of ordinary usage, and which are specific to the books one is composing, whose style is more different from common elocution than our most obscure Latin poets are from the most unified and natural prose […]^[16]

The missionary’s words are not to be disliked. The written French language of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also had different levels of written language, sometimes inaccessible to ordinary people, even those who knew how to read and write.

Another difficulty was the peculiar Chinese script, which was totally independent of the spoken language, and therefore confusing for missionaries. Le Comte did not study Chinese out of the blue, for he constantly struggled with the language, whose “[…] way of writing was not only imperfect, but also very inconvenient […].”^[17] And with good reason: if Chinese does not have the same writing system as other languages, it is “[…] either because of the little communication they had with their neighbors, or because of the little esteem they had for all foreign inventions […].”^[18]

From the alleged ignorance of the Chinese, Le Comte then drew a very personal conclusion, relating to the language, which he decidedly did not appreciate:

[…] This abundance of letters is, in my opinion, the source of the ignorance of the Chinese, because they devote their whole lives to this study, and have almost no time to think about the other sciences, imagining themselves to be learned enough when they can read. However, they may well not know all their letters: it’s a great deal when, after several years of tireless work, they can hear fifteen or twenty thousand of them […]^[19]

Le Comte in fact confuses two radically different notions: letters and characters and explains that Chinese writing is not alphabetical. If Chinese contained so many “letters,” the difficulty would frighten everyone, starting with the Chinese. This astonishing presentation has little to do with the reality of Chinese. Moreover, the idea that the Chinese spend their entire lives studying their language will long be widespread. Although he was a “defender” of China, Voltaire did not think much of the language, and though he firmly defended the idea of the originality and antiquity of Chinese, he thought it was a difficult language. Without actually knowing it, his judgment reflects the writings of French missionaries. We read in his Essai sur les mœurs:

[…] The art of making one’s ideas known through writing, which was supposed to be a very simple method, is the most difficult thing about them. Each word has different characters: in China, a scholar is the one who knows the most characters; some have reached old age before they can write well […]^[20]

Montesquieu, on the other hand, was a great admirer of the Chinese. For his part, Montesquieu, after his conversations with Arcade Hoang, the King’s Chinese interpreter, drew the following conclusions:

[…] The Chinese language is very easy to learn, the verbs have only one tense, which is the infinitive, as in the French language, and the nouns have only one case, with an article. It’s true that there are a few letters that are difficult to pronounce […] The great difficulty lies in knowing how to read; there are around 80,000 characters. It’s true that it’s enough to know 18 to 20,000 of them, because the others are terms of art, such as marine, masonry and others […] I believe that a European could read fluently within three years […]^[21]

Le Comte is thus convinced that the Chinese greatly admire French, which is composed of “a small number of figures.” What comforts him is that the Chinese:

[…] don’t even understand how we can with such a small number of figures, each of which means nothing, express on paper all our ideas, compose an infinite number of books and supply entire libraries. This art of assembling letters, forming words from them, and combining both into an infinite number of meanings, is for them an unknown mystery […].^[22]

As Chinese has no alphabet, the terms usually applied to an alphabetic language can only be wrongly applied to it. French travelers did, however, have a precise idea of how the Chinese language worked, but their vague, even inaccurate explanations could only confuse European readers. What’s more, some French missionaries tried to understand Chinese using French grammar. Father Bourgeois finds it difficult to differentiate between grammatical categories in Chinese and complains that in Chinese:

[…] the same word never has more than one ending; we don’t find everything in our declensions that distinguishes the gender and number of the things we’re talking about. In verbs, there’s nothing to help us understand which person is acting, how and at what time they’re acting, and whether they’re acting alone or with others. In a word, with the Chinese, the same word is noun, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine feminine, etc. It’s up to you, the listener, to spy on the circumstances and guess […]^[23]

For him, a language that has no declension, no genders or numbers, no conjugations, presents a certain ambiguity. What’s more, some missionaries were well aware that Chinese exerted immense prestige over its neighboring countries, which was advantageous for their evangelization project. Indeed, Matteo Ricci had emphasized this point in his writings—a point he did not have time to verify—but this idea was not without influence on his successors.

Taking advantage of the establishment of the Empire’s geographical map, Father François Noël was able to settle in the capital of “Tartary,” Chin-yam.^[24] He confirmed Ricci’s claims, and in 1703, in a report on the state of the Chinese Mission, he announced this encouraging news to the General of the Society of Jesus: he wished, with the help of the Chinese, to extend Christianity to the territory of Korea and Japan. The missionary expresses his ambitious plan as follows:

[…] If we were to establish a solid mission in this city, we could pass from there into the kingdom of Korea, which is also tributary to the Empire of China, and which is much larger than our maps represent; and perhaps we would then find some entrance into Japan, which is separated from it only by a small strait […]^[25]

This project to extend the domain of Christianity, thanks to the Chinese language, gives us a glimpse of the conquering spirit of the successors of François-Xavier and Matteo Ricci. As Arcade Hoang explains, Montesquieu wrote:

[…] This way of writing seems ridiculous to us, but it has its advantage. China’s neighboring states, such as Japan and others, use the same characters, and although the languages are different, and there are even 3 or 4 jargons in China, nevertheless, anyone who has once acquired a knowledge of Chinese characters can read all kinds of books, because the word for horse in Japanese, for example, is written with the same character as the word for horse in Chinese […]^[26]

The Age of Enlightenment, which saw the birth of a new way of “thinking society,” looked in many directions for ideas and even models to help reform and perfect the French political system. In many chapters of his De l’esprit des lois, Montesquieu presents different aspects of China. Like his contemporaries, Montesquieu relied heavily on the writings of the French Jesuits in Peking to advance his argument on the three forms of government. Not only did he document China, but he also sought out those who knew it well, and it was through Nicolas Fréret that Montesquieu met the King’s interpreter in 1713.

In Montesquieu’s Geographica manuscripts, we read one hundred and twenty pages of notes entitled « Quelques remarques sur la Chine que j’ai tirées des conversations que j’ai eues avec Mr. Hoang »,^[27] including some twenty pages on the Chinese language, carefully noted by Montesquieu, who was also one of the first Frenchmen to understand the 214 keys making up Chinese characters.

Montesquieu’s Geographica manuscripts.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, European readers still knew little about the Chinese language, and their opinion in this field depended mainly on the writings of travelers, especially the French in Peking, who, for religious reasons, emphasized the difficulties of this language, probably in order to show their seriousness in accomplishing their mission.

Montesquieu’s Geographica manuscripts

These difficulties did not deter Nicolas Fréret, a researcher at L’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (AIBL), who set out to unravel the mysteries of this language, considered one of the most difficult. Taking advantage of his work, he was in regular contact by letter with a number of Peking missionaries, including Fathers Gaubil, Parennin, de Prémare and de Mailla. In addition to these, he was in constant contact with Arcade Hoang, one of the first Chinese to come to Paris to work as the King’s interpreter. Nicolas Fréret was asked by P. Bignon to assist Arcade Hoang in writing a Chinese-French dictionary and a Chinese grammar. The latter did indeed write the 586 pages Chinese Grammar, with a nine-pages preface dedicated to the King but was unable to get his work printed due to his untimely death in 1716. Thanks to this collaboration, Hoang was able to pass on his knowledge of Chinese and China to Nicolas Fréret and later to Etienne Fourmont, as witnessed by his daily diary and manuscripts of the Chinese grammar.

Arcade Hoang, Préface de La Grammaire chinoise, 1716

Having read the writings of the Peking missionaries, Nicolas Fréret then compared what he had read with what Hoang was explaining about the Chinese language and became concerned that these comments were detrimental to the Chinese language. Fréret’s reaction is not unfounded. What’s more, he was one of the first Frenchmen to understand how Chinese writing worked, and of course the Chinese interpreter’s explanations were invaluable and indispensable to him:

[…] Sr Hoang taught me that the number of simple, elementary characters in Chinese writing was quite short, not exceeding 214. He added that they were called the sides or keys of the script, and that the 80,000 characters contained in dictionaries were merely various assemblies of these 214 radical characters. Chinese dictionaries presuppose a fairly perfect knowledge of these 214 keys and even of a certain number of the first compound characters whose use is the most frequent and the most necessary, in much the same way as Greek and Latin dictionaries […]^[28]

Arcade Hoang, La Grammaire chinoise, 1716

Through his conversations with Hoang, Fréret also understood that the way Chinese is studied in China bears little resemblance to what the Peking missionaries say, and he adds:

[…] Mr. Hoang told me on this subject that in China, children’s first studies consisted in learning from memory and by routine the meaning of 214 radical characters and those compound characters whose use is more common, which amount to about two thousand. He even showed me a little book composed for children’s elementary studies, in which the characters were arranged in various classes according to the order in which they were learned. From this I understood that Chinese writing was truly a language in its own right, independent of speech and intended to speak only to the eyes […]^[29]

This discovery of the structure of Chinese characters so amazed Fréret that he showed a real admiration for the language:

[…] The written language of the Chinese seems to me to be in general very philosophical and very analogical in comparison with other languages and, by that, easier to learn by studying it methodically than is represented by almost all those who speak it […]^[30]

His efforts to study and understand Chinese are worthy of admiration, albeit that he left no publication to testify to them. Nowadays, it is easy to get to grips with Chinese, whereas Nicolas Fréret, deprived of any material support, was able, in France, with the sole help of Arcade Hoang, to repair the errors committed, and in matters of Chinese language by the missionaries, he presents Chinese in the following terms:

[…] A truly philosophical language would be one that always expressed simple or primitive ideas by radical terms, and complex ideas by terms derived or composed from the former; the last point of perfection would be to express oneself in such a way that each derived word made known at first sight, not only the composition of the corresponding idea, but also into which simple ideas it would be necessary to resolve by decomposing it. We have no language where this view appears to have been taken, except in Chinese writing. The simple and primordial ideas and those shared by a large number of particular beings are expressed by simple and radical characters, and the complex or derived ideas are expressed by characters composed of the first, which we have called simple […]^[31]

This quotation seems important to us, as it perfectly illustrates Fréret’s partly intuitive understanding of the Chinese language. Of all the echoes that the writings of the French in China had in the cultivated minds of the eighteenth century, the one that resonated in Fréret seems to us the most accurate and the richest in promise for the future in terms of knowledge of Chinese culture.

There is no doubt that the discovery of the Chinese language came as a shock to the French, even though most of them, if not all, were already polyglot, and in addition to Latin and ancient Greek, had mastered one or more European languages. So, they were bound to be disarmed when they found themselves grappling with a language based on a totally different logic, with difficulties that were unforeseen because they were original. Few of them reacted positively. While some took to the game, discouragement was the most widely shared feeling. It is possible to understand, from their comments, what the source of their difficulties might have been, perhaps a way of approaching this study through their prejudices and European logic, which meant that for many, the basic principles of how the Chinese language works escaped them, especially when it came to writing. Indeed, it was mainly in this area that their lack of understanding led them to propagate misconceptions, fortunately partly rectified by the laudable efforts of Nicolas Fréret.

Kircher’s China illustrata, published in 1667

It should be pointed out that his knowledge of China was only partial, and that he based his thesis solely on the superficial similarities between Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Kircher’s theory nevertheless had a certain influence on the scholars of his time. Of course, this thesis had its origins in a certain scientific curiosity, but as always, science had to conform to religion, and it is obvious that in the background lay the desire to propagate the Christian faith in China.

Kircher’s China illustrata, published in 1667

Also influenced by the ideas of Kircher, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, M. Dortous de Mairan asked Père Parennin for some clarification of the Chinese language. This Parisian scholar always kept in touch with Dominique Parennin by letter, and the latter wrote some explanations on this question of “kinship” between the two nations and their languages, in his letter of September 20, 1740, and gave him the following conclusion:

[…] Let us now come to the parallel of the Egyptians and the Chinese, based on the same manners and customs of the two nations, which you continue to expound in a very clear and plausible manner. As you say, traits so similar and so particular make you inclined to attribute a common origin to them. I will frankly confess to you, Sir, that all these similarities only lead me to judge that these two ancient peoples drew their customs, their sciences and their arts from the same source, without one being a detachment or colony of the other. Everything preaches antiquity in China, and an antiquity so well established, that it is inconceivable that the Egyptians, in their beginnings, were in a position to raise great armies, to cross immense countries, to clear and populate a large kingdom.

Inscriptions and characters are not lacking on the Great Wall; the difference is that the Chinese still know their most ancient characters today, whereas the Egyptians can no longer read the script of their ancient ancestors. After all, it doesn’t matter who populated China, and I don’t think you’re much more interested in it than I am. We can only speculate. It would be far more desirable and advantageous to know this Empire thoroughly, as it was in its beginnings, in the course of time, and as it still is today. It is too rich a mine to have been able to dig it up to now, and to draw from it all that could be found useful to Europe […]^[32]

These lines by Father Parennin are essential, as they show a more objective point of view. Although a theologian, the missionary relies on the Classics and, while seeking an answer, seems convinced of the originality of Chinese civilization and its antiquity. The origin of Chinese characters preoccupied French scholars, whether in France or China. Among Chinese missionaries, opinions differed. Some claimed to have discovered biblical symbols in the spelling of Chinese characters. Their imagination, nourished by theology, is probably at the origin of this rapprochement. Joachim Bouvet is one of the most assiduous students of Chinese. His approach to the particular nature of the characters is unique. Convinced that the Classics are for the Chinese the equivalent of the Holy Scriptures, he tries to prove, like some of his colleagues, that he has found divine revelation in these books. Indeed, since his aim was above all religious, and faithful to his mission, he wanted to show the Chinese that the hidden meaning of these books corresponded to the biblical message:

[…] But if we judge by the symbolic meaning of the hieroglyphic characters and by the intimate and figurative meaning of the canonical books, and other faithful monuments of ancient tradition, to which it is impossible to arrive without the help of the principles of science and above all of true religion, of which China, by falling into the darkness of idolatry and atheism, we dare say, after having had the good fortune to find at last, not without special assistance from heaven, the key to the temple of ancient wisdom, that it is difficult to form an idea that equals the excellence of this admirable system; and we can add without rashness that the missionaries could not undertake anything more advantageous, to advance considerably in a very short time the work of the conversion of this Empire and that of the perfection of science, than to devote themselves with all their power to putting this system into its full light.

[…] but because it is difficult to fully convince ordinary scholars of the soundness of the specious and seemingly paradoxical propositions we are putting forward here before we have produced a detailed and complete exposition of the true system of symbolic science, with a new dictionary drawn up by the hieroglyphic analysis of each character and a new commentary on the canonical books composed according to the principles of this symbolic system and according to the hieroglyphic meaning of the characters in this dictionary, this will require quite a lot of work, and even the help of a few other missionaries, although the execution of the whole project seems easy to us. In the meantime, God willing, we shall soon give a brief outline of the elements of the system of symbolic wisdom, with a short essay on the new hieroglyphic dictionary we are meditating on; then, a new and faithful interpretation of the principal places in the canonical books, so that enlightened people like you, Sir, and also versed in all that is most profound in religion and the sciences, may judge whether we have reason to speak as affirmatively as we have dared to do on this subject […]^[33]

The symbolic meaning discovered by the missionaries seems totally fanciful to us today, yet we cannot help admiring their imagination, which enables them, at the cost of commendable intellectual efforts, to fuel this “theory.” Jean-François Fouquet, for his part, after several years of assiduous study of Chinese, found a “sure road” to demonstrating the “mysterious meaning” of Chinese characters. He communicates his discovery to Fourmont, saying that:

[…] This is the true idea that one must have Chinese characters considered in their origin. […] These characters veil all of nature, and in this respect, they contain the certain principles of the sciences, but they veil it insofar as it is the image of what is most supernatural and divine […]^[34]

Father Fouquet has indeed gone to great lengths to develop this thesis, for not only does it differ from that of his confreres, but he has an entirely different view of language from that of the Chinese themselves. Nevertheless, for him, this is probably the best way of linking the Bible to ancient Chinese texts. According to him, the characteristics of Chinese writing, from its very origin, are based on a divine intention, and he attempts to re-establish the original meaning behind the sinograms:

[…] A few examples drawn from Chinese characters will make my thoughts clear; but before going any further, I declare that what I’m about to say should only be taken as conjectures, for which I ask no more belief than if they had nothing to do with Religion; besides, I have no precautions to take against this fussy critic, bristling with petty ungodly prejudices, who has nothing but fits of laughter for anything that offends the ideas with which she cradles her incredulity and delusions. The character for boat, vessel is composed of the figure for vessel, that for mouth and the number eight, which may allude to the number of people who were in the Ark. The character lan, to covet, is made up of two mou, tree, in the middle of which is the character niu, woman; […] this fits in well with Eve’s sin […] Here are characters of another kind that can be considered prophetic: according to Tchang-tsien, a famous critic, the ancient Chinese greeted each other with these two words: vou yang [wou yang], without lamb; we can give whatever meaning we wish to this singular greeting, but it seems to me that the character yang, lamb, is used in several characters in such a way as to make us conjecture that the meaning attached to it indicated the spotless Lamb immolated for the salvation of the world […]^[35]

Father Fouquet’s interpretation shows how diligent he was in his research; his imagination seems boundless, and his interpretations can sometimes lead to smiles. However, if we go back in time, the intention of Fathers Fouquet and Bouvet is understandable, for, as we have said, at that time, in Europe, the Bible was still the only reference for the history of mankind, and the realization of the antiquity of Chinese civilization was bound to perplex theologians, and rightly so. On the other hand, the missionaries’ efforts in China were in vain, for it is unlikely that such fanciful interpretations could be accepted by Chinese scholars, even though the missionaries took their research seriously. What’s more, the “symbolic system” they found for Chinese writing was an aberration, for all these interpretations are partial, superficial and even imaginary visions. Despite their conceptions, which seem fanciful to us today, their laudable and, to a certain extent, touching efforts were not in vain. For they were the seeds of French sinology, which, without them, would doubtless not be what it is today. Their analysis of characters was the first scientific approach to Chinese writing, and a step in the right direction. They were the first to break down sinograms, and they did so with pertinence. However, given their ecclesiastical status and the century in which they lived, could it have been otherwise? If we confine ourselves to an appreciation of their research, we can say without hesitation that they were the first sinologists in history.

The depth of their research, the quality of their efforts to understand Chinese, can be illustrated by a final example, which also allows us to perceive the echo of the Jesuits’ work among the great French minds of the time. Montesquieu later wrote, after his exchanges with Arcade Hoang:

[…] I would be inclined to believe that these characters were invented by a society of literary men who wanted to hide them from the people, like our cabalists of today, and that their use gradually spread throughout the Orient. My reason for this is that these characters are not an image of the thing represented. It is probable that if the people had wanted to make their own writing, they would have done as some West Indian nations have done, painting rather than writing […]^[36]

When Father Parennin talks to a Parisian academician about the antiquity of China, he uses the example of China’s knowledge of iron. He can quote this fact from a classical Chinese book, which proves that his level of Chinese was sufficient to consult these ancient texts, which are particularly difficult to access:

[…] It’s certain that knowledge of iron is very old here. It seems to have been known to the first Chinese drivers, since it is mentioned in the Chu-King, in the Yu-cong chapter, where it is reported that iron comes from the territory of Leang-tchou. It is not said that this was where iron was first discovered […]^[37]

Lacking material support, French scholars and thinkers of the time were unable to judge what was happening so far away. Their only sources were these reports. Like his contemporaries, Voltaire showed great interest in Chinese civilization. Having read the writings of French missionaries on China, he was convinced that the antiquity of the Chinese language had no connection with that of Egyptian hieroglyphics, despite the hypotheses put forward by certain contemporary scholars. In his Essai sur les mœurs, he wrote: The language of the Egyptians is not related to that of the Chinese:

[…] The language of the Egyptians bore no relation to that of the nations of Asia […]. […] The hieroglyphs and alphabetic characters of Egypt […] bear no relation to those of other peoples. Before men invented hieroglyphs, they undoubtedly had representative signs. The Chinese finally invented characters to express every word in their language […]^[38]

This common-sense conclusion is a perfect illustration of the usefulness of the sinological work of the missionaries, or at least of some of them. In spite of a few errors—understandable, let us repeat, if we consider the novelty of the field they were working in—they were able to give an objective description of the purely scientific part of their work, and without this objectivity, Voltaire would not have been able to form such an accurate idea of the origins of Chinese writing, an idea which is the antithesis of the Jesuits’ theological interpretation, and this apparent paradox is to the Jesuits’ credit, as it guarantees the quality of their observations.