This important and muchdisputed essay edited by Ezra Pound from the manuscript of Ernest Fenollosa and published in Instigations London 1920 has since gone through several editions despite the ridicule of such sinologists as Professor George Kennedy of Yale who called it a small mass of confusion. The old theory as to the nature of the Chinese written character which Pound and Fenollosa followed is that the written character is ideogrammicampampmdasha stylized picture of the thing or concept it represents. The opposing theory which prevails today among scholars is that the character may have had pictorial origins in prehistoric times but that these origins have been obscured in all but a few very simple cases and that in any case native writers donampamprsquot have the original pictorial meaning in mind as they write.