Were people different in the past?

It explains it right here:

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Perhaps he was afraid that, if he read aloud, some obscure passage in the author he was reading might raise a question in the mind of an attentive listener, and he would then have to explain the meaning . . .

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The passage says the guy was really busy helping people

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because so many people used to keep him busy with their problems that I was prevented from talking to him face to face

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and his free time was spent either eating or reading

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When he was not with them, which was never for very long at a time, he was reviving his body with the food that it needed or refreshing his mind with reading.

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so when he read, he read silently so that others wouldn't hear him and ask him questions about what he just read.

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if he read aloud, some obscure passage in the author he was reading might raise a question in the mind of an attentive listener, and he would then have to explain the meaning

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make sense?

I'm going to quote the full passage, which I should have done initially. I left out a little. This is what struck me: It sounds to me like Augustine was struck by such an unusual occurrence as someone reading to themselves. Augustine sees Ambrose's eyes "scanning the page" and yet "his voice was silent."
Even his lips did not move! What an odd way to read!However, that last sentence does sound like an excuse. That is, it would have been more usual and more polite to read aloud amid his company.

My guess is this is a snapshot--a fossil, if you will--of a change taking place in humanity. We were becoming more "inward": a cultural move toward inwardness. I think I read something about this somewhere before.At any rate, Augustine spends a lot of time in his book talking about mind and memory. It is part of his main idea: he couldn't figure out any notion of God because he couldn't imagine the incorporeal, and he couldn't imagine God being corporeal. Then he begin to realize that his memories were incorporeal.The feeling of incorporeality comes from an experience of inwardness, manifested in silent reading.Once people read aloud; further back they thought aloud.

Googled "silent reading a history" and this was my first find..I know posting a link in argument is a little off form but please reagard this as extra information for all, and not a point of argument Click Here

I've encountered the claim that it was usual to read aloud before.I think our culture today is very different from then. The written word is very important today, actually it is indespensible.In acnient times the society was much more dependent on the spoken word. I've heard the peoples memories were better at some tasks back then - if you did not have the luxury of having everything written down, you had to remember things better. A page might be entrusted with the delivery of a spoken message, and was expected to remember long messages.So writing could be perceived as frosen speech - the sounds of the language captured. This is how it is still taught today as others have noted.By speaking what is read out loud, a person would activate the same centers in the brain as is used in normal conversation - and my bet would be that people back then were better at remembering the exact phrasing of what they read.I am still surprised when I meet people who have memorized large portions of text - I've been reading plenty of books my whole life, but I can recall very little of the exact phrasing. My guess is that people who taste the written words, by saying them out loud, are more prone to remembering the text.So my guess is the the paradigme of the ancient times was that to see the written word as a mere medium for the spoken word, you didn't read the book before you spoke it out loud!If this was how you were taught to read - there would be no reason for you to change it./Soren

Ambrose is a mans name. Men cannot multitask. Reading aloud makes it, for a man, impossible for "heart to explore meaning". It figures. If you read aloud whilst heart was exploring meaning it would go something like:For God so loved.....loved? God loves but in order to love, God must be personal. Gee!...the World...World? does that mean people or does it include the planet and all the stars.... He gave his only begotten Son...begotten what does that mean exactly... so that whoever would believe...but how can you believe what you don't know?...would not die...that would be fun or would it..692 years old and still riding a motorcycle can't imagine that...but would have eternal life...eternity? What on earth is that...

It seems to me that what you wrote is a nice depiction of Ambrose exploring the meaning of what he read (aloud). In your description he does exactly what you say can't be done.

Do you move your lips when you read? For me, it depends on what I'm reading. If I'm reading something in which the sound is important--such as "My Life as A Transitional" by the noted Dutch author--I will move my lips. If I'm reading a newspaper, no lip movement.Verse began, I suppose, as an oral mnemonic device and then when people began to write they continued with verse. Thus we have ancient treatises on gardening written in verse.Do you move your lips when you think? Lately, I've been noticing
myself doing that. This is a sign of aging.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 11-09-2005 11:38 AM

When I was a kid (and that goes back almost as far as Augustine and Ambrose ), we were taught not to move our lips when we read. So, it seems that moving our lips is the "natural" way to read - i.e. it has to be trained out of us.As you say, poetry seems more "natural" when spoken aloud, or at least mouthed. When we're young, we do what comes naturally. As we grow up, a lot of our "natural" behaviour is sociallized out of us - but as we age, we often care less and less what society thinks of us, so we revert to the "natural".

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Ah... but then he wouldn't be just reading aloud but reading and thinking aloud. Which is asking just a bit too much from Unitasking Man

Does this mean I can go play "Doctors and Nurses" with Mr's O'Flannery up in number 46?

I know this is OT but.. Personally I can multitask just fine thanks, why do you say men can't multitask?

This would not be advisable unless you are at least 80.

Manguel makes much of the trend toward silent reading: I think he's claiming that silent reading let people interpret a text more freely and individually rather than being told what the text meant. This led to the blossoming of more and more heresy until the Church was broken up. The weakening of the Church led to the rise of new ideas--Enlightenment ideas.

Yes, it's the same with me. And if I move my lips, even when I make no sound, I hear the words in my head. And lately verse has earned me two (!) posts of the month. And I've noticed others are picking it up too: Omnivorous wrote what may well be the shortest poem ever: url hellBy the way Robin, thank you for your vote for poster of the year. Nwr, if you see this, thank you too.Well, "Gramps", I thought we were of similar age, but now I think I'm just a rookie compared to you, because there's no lip movement for me when I'm thinking. But come to think of it: I have a pond in my garden with a lot of old thinking fish in it.