the dynamism which is so characteristic of the auditory 
     world in general, and of the spoken word in particular. 
     They lose much of the personal element, in the sense that 
     the heard word is most commonly directed at oneself, 
     whereas the seen word most commonly is not, and can be 
     read or not as whim dictates. They lose those emotional 
     overtones and emphases which have been described, for 
     instance, by Monrad-Krohn. . . . Thus, in general, words, 
     by becoming visible, join a world of relative indifference to 
     the viewer—a world from which the magic ‘power’ of the 
     word has been abstracted.

     Carothers continues his observations into the area of 
“free ideation” permitted to literate societies and quite out of 
the question for oral, nonliterate communities: