Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-12-06
WRITING AND THOUGHT.
The Direct Knowledge of tae senses Is
 the Main Thing.

the Main Thing.
 Perhaps the most suggestive event of the meeting (of the British assoeiatien) was the address delivered by Prof. Flin- ders Petrie on Man Before Writing in which he described the formation of ideas prior to speech and the develop ment of art prior to language. Our knowledge of the first must, of course, be founded mainly upon observation ofchiloiren and of animals, in the former of whom ideas are plainly anteeedent to the words by which they afterward come to be expressed, while in the lat ter they are altogether independent of them. For the second, Prof. Petrie took his illustrations from the pictorial writing of the ancient Egyptians, which, as it was presumably or certain ly prior to the discovery of alphabetical writing remains as monument of in- telligent expression apart from words.
 On the basis thus furnished he rests the somewhat sweeping conclusion that the present generation is drunken with writing" that we "let it override the growth of our minds and the common use of our senses," and that the servant, speech, has come to be mis- taken for the master, thought" He goes even further than this, and ex- presses his belief that writing is but a hurtfuI hindrance when it takes the place of the direct knowledge of the senses, and that the senses cannot grow or feed the mind when the letters of II from the living touch of nature. He cites the Baconian aphorism that words are the money of fools, but the counters cf wise men, and believes that the pre- vailing trust in writing has clearly dead ened the memory of the senses. which is always more ready in those who do not read, and that in some measure 1t has even deadened the senses themselves.
 The assumptions underlying this ar gument will appear very startling to many people who would probably be said by Prof. Petrie to he living under the yoke which he contemns, and who have been accustomed to regard an in- capacity to read writing as the direst of all misfortunes, and even as an in- surmountable barrier against the at- tainment of any high degree of mental activity. Dickens, who in many re- spects must be regarded as fair ex- ponent of the views of the man in the street has no better way of emphasiz- ing the intellectual darkness of his vagabond than to describe him as shuf- fling along, s'nnfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning of those mysterious symbols so abundant over the shops, and at the cor ner of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows;p and he has not thought it necessary keen observer though he was, to provide him with any additional acuteness of sense memory by way of compensation, for, or consequence of. his deficiency. 1t is always interesting to be confronted with doctrine which runs counter to all ordinary preposses- sions, and to be compelled, as 1t were, to turn these prepossessions over in the mind and to see what can really be urged in defense of them.
 The widely prevalent belief quoted by Prof petrie that words are the ln- struments of thought, and that no thought is possible without language, Is clearly one that must be abandoned. No lines can be drawn between the thoughts of the animal of the savage aaF3s6f the child, and they are all, as far as they go. independent of language. But it may safely be affirmed that no eomplexity or subtlety of thought is possible without words, or without words upon which usage has conferred precise and definite meanings, so that they are understood in the same sense by all who have legitimate occasion to employ them If we conceive the idea of dumb philosopher, who occupies him self in abstruse thinking, it would be necessary for him to invent some sym Bols by which the gradations of his thought could be pictured to his own mind; and, when the philosopher is not dumb, such symbols are supplied by the words which enable him 10 convey his thoughts to others and to receive theirs in return, An agricultural peasant may be man of great natural acute ness, but as long as he is restricted to the peasants vocabulary of two or three hundred words there would be no channel through which it would be possible to convey to his intelligence greater number of facts and doctrines which are familiar to better educated people It would be hardly possible, for example. to make him understand the undulatory theory of light and the con sequences which flow from it, although his natural canacitv mioht be olife equal to the task.-L London Times.
 Important.
 Mrs. Gotham-Why, how did you happen to get home from school so early?
 Little Girl-You said might ask to