The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.

The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs.

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West.

Canada emerged as a political entity with boundaries largely determined by the fur trade. These boundaries included a vast north temperate land area extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific and dominated by the Canadian Shield. The present Dominion emerged not in spite of geography but because of it.

It is suggested that all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture, and following Aristotle, the cathartic effects of culture. "It is written but I say unto you" is a powerful directive to Western civilization.

Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers.

The full impact of printing did not become possible until the adoption of the Bill of Rights in the United States with its guarantee of freedom of the press. A guarantee of freedom of the press in print was intended to further sanctify the printed word and to provide a rigid bulwark for the shelter of vested interests.