Passage A: Writing is the great preserver. A spoken teaching lives only as long as the last person who heard it correctly; a written one can outlast empires, crossing centuries and oceans to reach minds its author never imagined. Because the words hold still, they can be checked, compared, and corrected, and a reader may return to a difficult passage as often as understanding requires. Without the written word, the hard-won learning of one generation would drain away with each burial. Passage B: Yet an old objection deserves a hearing. When we trust our knowing to marks on a page, the ancient critics warned, we cease to carry it within us; the memory that once held whole epics grows slack and unused. A written word, moreover, cannot answer a question or defend itself — it repeats the same thing however you press it, giving the appearance of wisdom while lodging nothing living in the mind. What looks like a gain, they cautioned, hides a loss.