FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  
substituted for sight in nearly everything that relates to recorded information, to learning, and to educational work. By that means the organ of hearing will be restored to its rightful office. Enlightenment and instruction of all kinds will be given by means of phonographic books. The sound-wave will, in a word, be substituted for the light-wave as the vehicle of all our best information and intercourse. The ear will have habitually taken the place of the eye in the principal offices of interest and information. The unnatural method of the book--the visible book instead of the audible book--will then be done away. Nature, who instructs the child by sound, will continue to teach the man in the same manner. All mothers, from the mother bird to the mother woman, begin the teaching of their offspring by sound, by utterance. The mother bird continues in this manner; but the mother woman is presently supplanted by a teacher who comes in with a printed book filled with crooked marks, and would have it that learning must be _thus_ acquired. Instead of continuing the natural process of instruction to the complete development and information of the mind, an abnormal method has been adopted by mankind with many hurtful consequences. The youth at a certain age is led into the world of science, and there dismissed from the mother-method, to acquire, if he can, the painful and tedious use of meaningless hieroglyphics. There he must study with the eye, learning as best he may the significance of the crooked signs which can at the most signify no more than words. How much of human energy and life and thought have been thus wasted in the instruction of the mind by characters and symbols. The eyes of mankind have, as we said, been dimmed and shadowed, and at the same time the faculties have been overheated and the equipose of perception and memory seriously disturbed by this unnatural process of learning. Human beings begin the acquirement of knowledge with words, and they end with words; but an unnatural civilization has taught man to walk the greater part of his intellectual journey by means of arbitrary systems of writing and printing. When the next Columbian Year arrives we shall see him untaught (a hard thing withal) and retaught on nature's plan of learning. Nature teaches language by sound only. Artificiality writes a scrawl. Nature's book is a book of words. Man's book is as yet a book of signs and symbols. Nature's book
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
mother
 

learning

 

information

 

Nature

 

instruction

 
method
 
unnatural
 

manner

 
mankind
 

symbols


crooked

 

process

 
substituted
 

dimmed

 
beings
 

acquirement

 
shadowed
 
disturbed
 

perception

 

memory


equipose

 

characters

 

faculties

 

overheated

 

thought

 

signify

 

significance

 

hieroglyphics

 

energy

 

knowledge


wasted

 
civilization
 

withal

 

retaught

 

untaught

 
nature
 

scrawl

 
writes
 

Artificiality

 
teaches

language
 

arrives

 
intellectual
 
greater
 

meaningless

 

taught

 
journey
 

arbitrary

 
Columbian
 

printing