Speak, memory

Lest we forget. From Plato’s Phaedrus:

SOCRATES: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god,
whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him,
and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation
and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery
was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of
the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt
which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by
them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that
the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he
enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised
some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them.
It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in
praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This,
said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories;
it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O
most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the
best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users
of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a
paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a
quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create
forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their
memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not
remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid
not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth,
but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and
will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will
generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of
wisdom without the reality.