The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-12-06
WRITING AND THOUGHT.
The Direct Knowledge of the Senses
Is the Main Thing.
From the London Times.

From the London Times.
Perhaps the most suggestive event of
the meeting of the British Association
was the address delivered by Prof. Fin
ders Petrie on 'Man Before Writing" IN
which he described the formation of ideas
prior to speech and the development of art
prior to language. Our knowledge OF the
first must, of course be founded mainly
upon observation of children and of ami
mails. in the former of whom ideas are
plainly antecedent to the words by which
they afterward come TO be expressed
while in the latter 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 certainly prior to the discovery Of al
pnabetical writing. remains as a monu-
ment of intelligent expression apart from
words.
On the basis thus furnished he rests the
somewhat sweeping conclusion that the
present generation is drunken with writ
ing" that we "let it override the growth
of our minds and the common use of our
Senses" and that 1.-The servant, speech,
has come to be mistaken for the master,
thought" He goes even further than
this, and expresses his belief that writing
is but hurtful 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 writ
ing are allowed to hold them back from
the living touch of nature. He cites the
Baconian aphorism that words are the
money of FOOLS but the counters of WISE
men, and believes that the prevailing trust
in writing has clearly deadened the mem
DRY of the senses, which is always more
ready In those who do not read, and that
in some measure it has even deadened the
senses themselves.
The assumptions underlying this argu-
ment will appear very startling to many
people who would probably be said bv
Prof. Petrie to be living under the yoke
which he contemns, and who have been
accustomed to regard an incapacity 10
read writing, as the direst of all misfor-
tunes, and even as an insurmountabie
barrier against the attainment of any high
degree of mental activity. Dickens who,
in many respects, must be regarded as
fair exponent of the views of the man in
the street. has no better way of empha-
sizing the intellectual darkness of his
vagabond than to describe him as shutting
along, unfamiliar with the shapes and
in utter darkness as to the meaning, of
those mysterious symbols, so abundant
over the shops, and at the corner of
streets, and on the doors. and in the win
doWs;" and he has not thought il neces-
provide him with any additional acutencss
Of sense memory by way OF compcnsa-
tion for, or consequence of, his deficien-
cy. It is always interesting to be con-
trolled with a doctrine which runs coun-
ter to all ordinary prepossessions, and to
be compelled as it were to turn these
preposessions 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 instru-
ments 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 ami
NAL. of the savage and of the child, and
they are all. as far as they go independent
of language. But il may safely be affirmed
that no compleXity or subtlcty of Thought
Is possible without words or without
words upon which usage has conferred
precise and definite meanings so that they
are understood I'm the same sense by ain
who have legitimate occasion to employ
them. II We conceive the idea Of a dumb
philosopher. who occupies himself in alb
struse thinking IL would be necessary for