Under the impact of electronic immediacy the world is being reorganized in sensory terms toward the primacy of the audile-tactile. In the educational system, emphasis remains on traditional methods of logical (visual) and sequential learning. The effect on literature is an increased interest in the spoken, as opposed to the written word. Through the arts, the sensory ordering of cultures can be determined. Examples from art and literature are compared to illuminate the area of sensory modalities that are encountered in writing and painting. Comparisons are drawn between works of such artists and writers as: Gandhara and Yeats, the Limbourg Limner and Shakespeare, Bosch and Kafka, Ben Jonson and Breugel, and Munch and Eliot. (LL)