ion comes about through the invention of writing in a process that begins by simplifying hieroglyphic or ideographic characters. First, the words that these figures represent are reduced to their constituent sounds, and new figures (alphabetic characters) are given to those sounds. From these characters, many more words can be produced, thereby allowing new words to be invented, and reducing the role that memory plays in the literacy associated with hieroglyphs or ideographs. The older forms represented a limited number of ideas, but the simplification of characters into representations of sounds, rather than ideas, allows for a seemingly infinite number of permutations, and thus an unlimited proliferation of new ideas. As Jill Lepore notes in her study of alphabetic innovation, A is for American, “from the perspective of many Europeans and Americans, the Chinese system required so much memorization, and was so difficult to learn, that literacy was restricted to a few, and communication and the advance of learning were greatly limited. Later American spelling reformers even argued that the Chinese script condemned the Chinese people to despotic government.” The poem goes on to describe a period of privation in the history of letters (here meaning learned culture), as access to texts and literacy remained under the control of tyrants and oppressors, exemplified by the Roman Catholic Church. It is only the invention of print that releases letters into the world and makes actual their potential power. Science now dreads on books no holy war; Thus multiply’d, and thus disperst so far. She smiles exulting, doom’d no more to dwell Midst moths and cobwebs in a friar’s cell: To see her Livy and most favour’d sons The prey of Worms and Popes, of Goths and Huns . . . Her bold Machine redeems the patriot’s fame From royal malice, and the bigot’s flame; To bounded thrones displays the legal plan, And vindicates the dignity of man. Tyrants and time; in her lose half their pow’r; And Reason shall subsist, tho’ both devour, Her sov’reign empire, Britons, O maintain; While Daemons yell, and Monks blaspheme in vain. Her’s is the regimen of civil good; And her’s religion, truly understood. 12 American Periodicals 1-pgi-AP161_6547 Rev 25 1/25/06 10:07 AM Page 12