protest, “But I do visualize on the telephone!” When he has a 
chance to try the experiment deliberately, he will find that he 
simply can’t visualize while phoning, though all literate people 
try to do so and, therefore, believe they are succeeding. But 
that is not what most irritates the literate and visualizing 
Westerner about the telephone. Some people can scarcely talk 
to their best friends on the phone without becoming angry. The 
telephone demands complete participation, unlike the written 
and printed page. Any literate man resents such a heavy 
demand for his total attention, because he has long been 
accustomed to fragmentary attention. Similarly, literate man 
can learn to speak other languages only with great difficulty, 
for learning a language calls for participation of all  the senses 
at once. On the other hand, our habit of visualizing renders the 
literate Westerner helpless in the nonvisual world of advanced 
physics. Only the visceral and audile-tactile Teuton and Slav