The Medium Is the Message
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 o f
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
conduces to nourishment is relishable, whereas other things that cannot be assimulated
and be turned into our substance are insipid. A Discourse cannot be pleasant to the
Hearer that is not easie to the Speaker; nor can it be easily pronounced unless it be
heard with delight.
Here is an equilibrium theory of human diet and expression such as even now we are only
striving to work out again for media after centuries of fragmentation and specialism.
annaabi.ee 
