Now is the possession of two languages, a spoken and a written, an
advantage or not? With regard to the spoken tongue, the question answers
itself. If we were all deaf and dumb, we could still live and carry on
business, but we should be badly handicapped. On the other hand, if we
could neither read nor write, we should simply be in the position of our
remote forefathers or even of many in our own day and our own land. What
then is the reasons for a separate written language, beyond the variety
thereby secured, by the use of two senses, hearing and sight, instead of
only one?

Evidently the chief reason is that written speech is eminently fitted for
preservation. Without the transmittal of ideas from one generation to
another, intellectual progress is impossible. Such transmittal, before the
invention of writing, was effected solely by memory. The father spoke to
the son, and he, remembering what was said, told it, in turn, to the
grandson. This is tradition, sometimes marvellously accurate, but often
untrustworthy. And as it is without check, there is no way of telling
whether a given fact, so transmitted, is or is not handed down faithfully.
Now we have the phonograph for preserving and accurately reproducing
spoken language. If this had been invented before the introduction of
written language, we might never have had the latter; as it is, the device
comes on the field too late to be a competitor with the book in more than
a very limited field. For preserving particular voices, such as those of
great men, or for recording intonation and pronunciation, it fills a want
that writing and printing could never supply.

For the long preservation of ideas and their conveyance to a human mind,
written speech is now the indispensable vehicle. And, as has been said,
this is how man makes progress. We learn in two ways: by undergoing and