date

27 July 1814 Logic 3
27 July 1814

Logic

3

Ch.3.III Operations

'.7.VI. Communication

19

3

Writing, including its comparatively recent improvements such as printing, engraving, &c., is in every case discourse addressed to the eye. But to this organ discourse in this form has been found capable of addressing itself in either of two ways. 1. in an unimmediate way, through the medium and intervention of discourse addressed to the ear - i.e. of articulate sounds, or in an immediate way, without the intervention of discourse in that form or any other form.

In the first case, sounds - audible signs, are the immediate signs of thought - it is of these audible signs that visible characters are the signs - and it is only in this comparatively remote way that the function of signs of thought is performed by the visible characters.

In the other case, thought is some how or other performed in an immediate way by the visible characters.

Of these two modes the former is the only one familiar to the generality of civilized nations:

The other is exemplified in the vast empire of China - in the empire of Japan, and in some of the states subject to the dominion or ascendancy of the Chinese.
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    The touch has been mentioned above as one of the three senses through the medium of which the operations of discourse are capable of being performed. This accordingly is a medium through which in the case of the blind, {by the help of modern ingenuity} it is customarily carried on, in many well-known instances. But where one of the three conversible senses is in this way employed, it is never any otherwise than in a remote way, viz. through the intervention of one of the other two conversible ones if such they may be called. (a)

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    The hearing - its organ, the ear - the sight - its organ, the eye - the touch - its organ, the skin, and more particularly the skin of the hand - to all these senses has what is called discourse been made to address itself. Audible, visible, and tangible - such accordingly has respectively been the nature of the signs of which in these several cases discourse, this organ of the mind, has been composed.

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