Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/287

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GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 265 ideas to the motor-speech, centre, but to the auditory centre, which, remembering the sounds by fresh impulses, arouses the motor centre to utter them. Writing is still more interfered with, because it depends upon the utterance- memory, which goes astray without the sound- memory. The auditory centre is essential to the under- standing of what is read. In reading, the visual centre cannot, as a rule, call up the ideas, else destruction of the motor-speech centre would not interfere with reading as it does. Nor is the motor-speech centre directly connected with the centre for ideas; if it were, destruction of the auditory centre would not interfere with talking as it does. This leaves only the audi- tory centre, which is abundantly capable, for the sounds of the words readily awaken ideas before the other language centres begin to work and after they have been destroyed. The auditory centre is the central station through which the other language centres communicate with the centre for ideas. The sound of a word is the word itself. Printed words are only convenient symbols for recalling the sounds. Thinking requires the use of words, not visual words, but the words heard and uttered. It is true deaf-