[Emanation]

>Dicson has in mind the passage in Plato's Phaedrus which I quoted in an earlier chapter, in which Socrates tells the story of the interview between the Egyptian King, Thamus and the wise Theuth who had just invented the art of writing. Thamus says that that the invention of writing will not improve memory but destroy it, because the Egyptians will trust in these 'external characters which are not part of themselves' and this will discourage 'the use of their own memory within them'.

The Art of Memory, Frances A. Yates

Differentiating between external characters and internal ones is kinda interesting.