Wilkin's "Real Character" is a constructed family of symbols, corresponding to a classification scheme developed by Wilkins and his colleagues. It was intended as a pasigraphy, in other words, to provide elementary building blocks from which could be constructed the universe's every possible thing and notion. The Real Character is not an orthography: i.e. it is not a written representation of spoken language. Instead, each symbol represents a concept directly, without (at least in the early parts of the "Essay's" presentation) there being any way of vocalizing it. Inspiration for this approach came in part from contemporary European accounts of the Chinese writing system, which were somewhat mistaken.