wolde saye her owne stage, and thereafter orderynge and 
     behauynge herselfe in the playe that she hathe in hande, 
     playethe her parte accordynglye wyth comlynes, vtteringe 
     nothynge owte of dewe ordre and fassyon.’

     Writing in 1516, More is aware that the medieval 
scholastic dialogue, oral and conversational, is quite unsuited 
to the new problems of large centralist states. A new kind of 
processing of problems, one thing at a time, “nothing out of 
due order and fashion,” must succeed to the older dialogue. For 
the scholastic method was a simultaneous mosaic, a dealing 
with many aspects and levels of meaning in crisp simultaneity. 
This method will no longer serve in the new lineal era. A recent 
book, Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue , by Father Ong 
is entirely concerned with this previously obscure subject, which 
he illuminates brilliantly. His investigation of the transformation