clues to the magic of these media or to their subliminal charge.

     Leonard Doob, in his report Communication in Africa , tells 
of one African who took great pains to listen each evening to 
the BBC news, even though he could understand nothing of it. 
Just to be in the presence of those sounds at 7 P.M. each day 
was important for him. His attitude to speech was like ours to 
melody—the resonant intonation was meaning enough. In the 
seventeenth century our ancestors still shared this native’s 
attitude to the forms of media, as is plain in the following 
sentiment of the Frenchman Bernard Lam expressed in The Art  
of Speaking  (London, 1696):

     ’Tis an effect of the Wisdom of God, who created Man to be 
     happy, that whatever is useful to his conversation (way of 
     life) is agreeable to him . . . because all victual that