nd the variety
thereby secured, by the use of two senses, hearing and sight, instead of
only one?

Evidently the chief reason is that written speech is eminently fitted for
preservation. Without the transmittal of ideas from one generation to
another, intellectual progress is impossible. Such transmittal, before the
invention of writing, was effected solely by memory. The father spoke to
the son, and he, remembering what was said, told it, in turn, to the
grandson. This is tradition, sometimes marvellously accurate, but often
untrustworthy. And as it is without check, there is no way of telling
whether a given fact, so transmitted, is or is not handed down faithfully.
Now we have the phonograph for preserving and accurately reproducing
spoken language. If this had been invented before the introduction of
written language, we might never have had the latter; as it is, the device
comes on the field too late to be a competitor with the book in more than
a very limited field. For preserving particular voices, such as those of
great men, or for recording intonation and pronunciation, it fills a want
that writing and printing could never supply.

For the long preservation of ideas and their conveyance to a human mind,
written speech is now the indispensable vehicle. And, as has been said,
this is how man makes progress. We learn in two ways: by undergoing and
reflecting on our own experiences and by reading and reflecting on those
of others. Neither of these ways is sufficient in itself. A child bound
hand and foot and confined in a dark room would not be a fit subject for
instruction, but neither would he reach a high level if placed on a desert
island far from his kind and forced to rely solely on his own experiences.
The experiences of our forebears, read in the light of our own; the
experiences of our forebears, used as a starting-point from which we may
move forward to fresh fields--these we must know and appreciate if we are
to make progress. This means the book and its use.

Books may be used in three ways--for information, for recreation, for
inspiration. There are some who feel inclined to rely implicitly on the
information that is to be found in books--to believe that a book can not
lie. This is an unfortunate state of mind. The word of an author set down
in print is worth no more than when he gives it to us in spoken
language--no more and no less. There was, to be sure, a time when the
printed word implied at lea