damned fat book, eh, Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble, scribble, 
eh, Mr. Gibbon?” De Tocqueville was a highly literate aristocrat 
who was quite able to be detached from the values and 
assumptions of typography. That is why he alone understood 
the grammar of typography. And it is only on those terms, 
standing aside from any structure or medium, that its 
principles and lines of force can be discerned. For any medium 
has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary. 
Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state 
of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to this end is simply in 
knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as 
in the first bars of a melody.

     A Passage to India  by E. M. Forster is a dramatic study of 
the inability of oral and intuitive oriental culture to meet with 
the rational, visual European patterns of experience. “Rational,”