r forms of animated life
that registration becomes more and more complete, memory becomes more
perfect. There is not any necessary resemblance between an external form
and its ganglionic impression, any more than there is between the words
of a message delivered in a telegraphic office and the signals which
the telegraph may give to the distant station; any more than there
is between the letters of a printed page and the acts or scenes they
describe, but the letters call up with clearness to the mind of the
reader the events and scenes.

An animal without any apparatus for the retention of impressions must
be a pure automaton--it cannot have memory. From insignificant and
uncertain beginnings, such an apparatus is gradually evolved, and, as
its development advances, the intellectual capacity increases. In man,
this retention or registration reaches perfection; he guides, himself by
past as well as by present impressions; he is influenced by experience;
his conduct is determined by reason.

A most important advance is made when the capability is acquired by any
animal of imparting a knowledge of the impressions stored up in its own
nerve-centres to another of the same kind. This marks the extension of
individual into social life, and indeed is essential thereto. In the
higher insects it is accomplished by antennal contacts, in man by
speech. Humanity, in its earlier, its savage stages, was limited to
this: the knowledge of one person could be transmitted to another by
conversation. The acts and thoughts of one generation could be imparted
to another, and influence its acts and thoughts.

But tradition has its limit. The faculty of speech makes society
possible--nothing more.

Not without interest do we remark the progress of development of
this function. The invention of the art of writing gave extension and
durability to the registration or record of impressions. These, which
had hitherto been stored up in the brain of one man, might now be
imparted to the whole human race, and be made to endure forever.
Civilization became possible--for civilization cannot exist without
writing, or the means of record in some shape.

From this psychological point of view we perceive the real significance
of the invention of printing--a development of writing which, by
increasing the rapidity of the diffusion of ideas, and insuring their
permanence, tends to promote civilization and to unify the human race.

In the foregoing para