Front matter · List of plates

Eight words. Eight instruments.

This book runs on eight words, and each is drawn here out of itself: the shape is nothing but that word, set again and again until it holds. No photographs, no clip art, not one stroke of line. Read the eight and you hold the argument of the whole volume before you have read a page of it, which is precisely what a list of plates was always for.

Fig. IAvia perviathe rose of the course — the family motto, boxing its own compass.On the frontispiece →

Fig. IICuriositythe vessel — on the frontispiece it casts off, and mid-voyage it becomes a rocket.See it sail →

Fig. IIICraftthe dividers — care on one point, repetition on the other.Chapter III →

Fig. IVMedicinethe rod of Asclepius — one serpent, one staff, five thousand years of practice.Chapter IV →

Fig. VFuturethe wave — it looks like a wall until you learn to read water.Chapter V →

Fig. VISignalthe lighthouse — its whole job is to keep saying one true thing.Chapter VI →

Fig. VIIRecordthe anchor — the voyage holds only if it is written down.Chapter VII →

TailpieceAudacitythe match — a small wooden thing, until somebody strikes it.The admission →

Now read the book ≡The Frontispiece →Chapter III · The Works