HOW TO THINK 



nations, lacking the art of writing, have no history at all 

 in the proper acceptance of the word. 



Of course, it would be absurd to deny that progres- 

 sive ideas may be passed on by word of mouth from 

 one generation to another. Through this means alone a 

 certain progress is possible ; and indeed it is axiomatic 

 that man must have struggled forward with this aid 

 alone until the art of writing was developed, albeit 

 such modern investigators as Arthur Evans are dis- 

 posed to think that this stage of progress was reached 

 much earlier than has hitherto been believed. Mr. 

 Evans, indeed, suggests that man may have learned to 

 transmit ideas by a crude picture-writing before he even 

 acquired the power of articulate speech. I cannot 

 agree with this opinion, and this is not the place to 

 discuss it; but at least the idea is full of suggestive- 

 ness. 



In any event it requires but a little reflection to show 

 how relatively narrow the vision of mankind must have 

 been, so long as no word beyond a vague oral tradi- 

 tion could be passed on from the great minds of the past 

 to the aspiring minds of later generations. Imagine, 

 if you please, what the world to-day would be like, were 

 all its wealth of books to be suddenly destroyed. Proba- 

 bly the aggregate memories of all the persons living to- 

 day could not reproduce more than a small fraction of 

 even the classics of literature. Even if here and there 

 an exceptional memory could reproduce a masterpiece, 

 consider how soon that masterpiece would become 

 altered and perverted as successive hearers denied 

 by hypothesis the capacity to write down what they 



