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dimension on canvas, cubism sets up an interplay o f planes and contradiction or dramatic conflict o f patterns, lights, textures that "drives home the message" b y involvement. T h i s is held b y many to be an exercise i n painting, n o t i n illusion. I n other words, cubism, b y giving the inside and outside, the top, b o t t o m , back, and f r o n t and the rest, i n t w o dimensions, drops the illusion of perspective i n favor o f instant sensory awareness o f the w h o l e . Cubism, b y seizing o n instant total awareness, suddenly announced that the medium is the message. Is i t n o t evident that the moment that sequence yields t o the simultaneous, one is i n the w o r l d o f the structure and o f configuration? Is that n o t w h a t has happened i n physics as i n painting, p o e t r y , and i n communication? Specialized segments o f attention have shifted t o total field, and w e can n o w say, " T h e m e d i u m is the message" quite naturally. Before the electric speed and t o t a l field, i t was n o t obvious that the medium is the message. T h e message, i t seemed, was the " c o n t e n t , " as people used t o ask w h a t a painting was abott. Y e t t h e y never thought to ask w h a t a m e l o dy was about, nor w h a t a house or a dress was about. I n such matters, people retained some sense of the w h o l e pattern, o f f o r m and f u n c t i o n as a u n i t y . B u t i n the electric age this integral idea o f structure and configuration has become so prevalent that educational t h e o r y has taken u p the matter. Instead o f w o r k i n g w i t h specialized "problems" i n a r i t h metic, the structural approach n o w f o l l o w s the linea o f force i n the field o f number and has small children meditating about n u m ber theory and "sets." Cardinal N e w m a n said o f Napoleon, " H e understood the grammar o f g u n p o w d e r . " Napoleo n had paid some attention t o other media as w e l l , especially the semaphore telegraph that gave h i m a great advantage over his enemies. H e is o n record f o r saying that " T h r e e hostile newspapers are m o r e t o be feared than a thousand bayonets." Alexis de Tocqueville was the first t o master the grammar o f p r i n t and t y p o g r a p h y . H e was thus able t o read off the message o f c o m i n g change i n France and America as i f he were reading aloud f r o m a text that had been handed t o h i m . In, fact, the nineteenth century i n France and i n A m e r i c a was just such an

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open book t o de Tocqueville because he had learned the grammar o f p r i n t . So he, also, k n e w w h e n that grammar d i d n o t apply. H e was asked w h y he d i d n o t w r i t e a book o n England, since he k n e w and admired England. H e replied: One would have to have an unusual degree of philosophical folly to believe oneself able to judge England i n six months. A year always seemed to me too short a time i n which to appreciate the United States properly, and i t is much easier to acquire clear and precise notions about the American Union than about Great Britain. I n America all laws derive in a sense f r o m the same line of thought. The whole of society, so to speak, is founded upon a single fact; everything springs f r o m a simple principle. One could compare America to a forest pierced by a multitude of straight roads all converging on the same point. One has only to find the center and everything is revealed at a glance. But i n England the paths r u n criss-cross, and i t is only by travelling down each one of them that one can build up a picture of the whole. D e Tocqueville, i n earlier w o r k o n the French Revolution, had explained h o w i t was the p r i n t e d w o r d that, achieving cultural saturation i n the eighteenth century, had homogenized the French nation. Frenchmen were the same k i n d o f people f r o m n o r t h t o south. T h e typographic principles o f u n i f o r m i t y , c o n t i n u i t y , and lineality had overlaid the complexities of ancient feudal and oral society. T h e R e v o l u t i on was carried o u t b y the n e w literati and lawyers. I n England, however, such was the power of the ancient oral traditions o f c o m m o n law, backed b y the medieval institution o f Parliament, that no u n i f o r m i t y or c o n t i n u i t y o f the n e w visual p r i n t culture could take complete hold. T h e result was that the most i m p o r t a n t event i n English history has never taken place; namely, the English Revolution o n the lines of the French Revolut i o n . T h e A m e r i c a n Revolution had no medieval legal institutions t o discard or t o r o o t out, apart f r o m monarchy. A n d many have held that the America n Presidency has become v e r y m u c h more personal and monarchical than any European monarch ever could be. De Tocqueville's contrast between England and America

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is clearly based o n the fact o f t y p o g r a p h y and o f p r i n t culture creating u n i f o r m i t y and c o n t i n u i t y . England, he says, has rejected this principle and clung t o the dynamic or oral common-law tradition. Hence the discontinuity and unpredictable qualit y o f English culture. T h e grammar o f p r i n t cannot help t o construe the message of oral and n o n w r i t t e n culture and institutions. T h e English aristocracy was p r o p e r l y classified as barbarian b y M a t t h e w A r n o l d because its power and status had n o t h i n g t o do w i t h literacy or w i t h the cultural forms o f t y p o g r a p h y . Said the D u k e of Gloucester t o E d w a r d G i b b o n u p o n the publication o f his Decline and Fall: " A n o t h e r damned fat book, eh, M r . G i b bon? Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, M r . G i b b o n ? " De T o c q u e ville was a h i g h l y literate aristocrat w h o was quite able to be detached f r o m the values and assumptions o f t y p o g r a p h y. T h a t is w h y he alone understood the grammar of t y p o g r a p h y. A n d i t is o n l y on those terms, standing aside f r o m any structure or medium , that its principles and lines o f force can be discerned. For any medium has the p o w e r o f imposing its o w n assumption o n the u n w a r y . Prediction and c o n t r o l consist i n avoiding this subliminal state o f Narcissus trance. B u t the greatest aid t o this end is simply i n k n o w i n g that the spell can occur immediately u p o n contact, as i n the first bars o f a melody. A Passage to India b y E. M . Forster is a dramatic study o f the i n a b i l i ty of oral and i n t u i t i v e oriental culture t o meet w i t h the rational, visual European patterns of experience. "Rational," o f course, has f o r the W e s t l o n g meant " u n i f o r m and continuous and sequential." I n other words, w e have confused reason w i t h literacy, and rationalism w i t h a single technology. T h u s i n the electric age man seems t o the conventional W e s t t o become irrational. I n Forster's novel the moment o f t r u t h and dislocation f r o m the typographic trance o f the W e s t comes i n the Marabar Caves. Adela Quested's reasoning powers cannot cope w i t h the total inclusive field o f resonance that is India. A f t e r the Caves: " L i f e w e n t on as usual, b u t had no consequences, that is t o say, sounds d i d not echo nor t h o u g h t develop. E v e r y t h i n g seemed c u t off at its r o o t and therefore infected w i t h illusion." A Passage to India (the phrase is f r o m W h i t m a n , w h o saw