Writing is an entirely new kind of language, and implies a complete change in the relations of man’s waking-consciousness, in that it _liberates it from the tyranny of the present_. Picture-languages which portray objects are far older, older probably than any words; but here the picture is no longer an immediate denotation of some sight-object, but primarily the sign of a word--i.e., something already abstract from sensation. It is the first and only example of a language that demands, without itself providing, the necessary preparatory training. Script, therefore, presupposes a fully developed grammar, since the activity of writing and reading is infinitely more abstract than that of speaking and hearing. Reading consists in scanning a script-image _with a feeling of the significances of corresponding word-sounds_; what script contains is not signs for things, but signs for other signs. The grammatical sense must be enlarged by instantaneous comprehension. The word is a possession of man generally, whereas writing belongs exclusively to Culture-men. In contrast to verbal language it is conditioned, not merely partially, but entirely, by the political and religious Destinies of world-history. All scripts come into being in the _individual_ Cultures and are to be reckoned amongst their profoundest symbols. But hitherto a comprehensive history of script has never been produced, and a psychology of its forms and their modifications has never even been attempted. _Writing is the grand symbol of the Far_, meaning not only extension-distance, but also, and above all, duration and future and the will-to-eternity. Speaking and listening take place only in proximity and the present,[206] but through script one speaks to men whom one has never seen, who may not even have been born yet; the voice of a man is heard centuries after he has passed away. It is one of the first distinguishing marks of the _historical_ endowment. But for that very reason nothing is more characteristic of a Culture than its inward relation to writing. If we know as little as we do about Indogermanic, it is because the two earliest Cultures whose people made use of this system--the Indian and the Classical--were so _a-historic_ in disposition that they not only formed no script of their own, but even fought off alien scripts until well into the Late period of their course. Actually, the whole art of Classical prose is designed immediately for the ear. One read it as if one were speaking, whereas we, by comparison, speak everything as though we were reading it--with the result that in the eternal seesaw between script-image and word-sound we have never attained to a prose style that is perfect in the Attic sense. In the Arabian Culture, on the other hand, each religion developed its own script and kept it even through changes of verbal language; the duration of the sacred books and teachings and the script as symbol of duration belong together.