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.