apprehending the motions of the author’s mind. The reader of 
print, that is, stands in an utterly different relation to the 
writer from the reader of manuscript. Print gradually made 
reading aloud pointless, and accelerated the act of reading till 
the reader could feel “in the hands of” his author. We shall see 
that just as print was the first mass-produced thing, so it was 
the first uniform and repeatable “commodity.” The assembly 
line of movable types made possible a product that was 
uniform and as repeatable as a scientific experiment. Such a 
character does not belong to the manuscript. The Chinese in 
printing from blocks in the eighth century, had been mainly 
impressed by the repetitive character of print as “magical” and 
had used it as an alternative form to the prayer wheel.

     William Ivins has made a more thorough analysis of the 
aesthetic effects of prints and typography on our human