Tulsa daily world. [volume] (Tulsa, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1905-1919, 1906-06-03
THE MISSION OF THE BOOK

There are people who may assent to all that is said OF
education in the life-lasting view Of it., who will deny that
there is a question in it of books. owe they say, "fnd
more for our instruction in life than in books. The reality
Of things interests MS more and teaches H. more than the
report and description of them by Others. We study men
among men, and Gods works in the midst of them. We
prefer to take knowledge at first hand, from nature and
from society, rather than second -handedly out of a printed
page, Your book wisdom is from the closet and for closet
use. 1t is not the kind needed in a busy and breezy
world Well, there is a half truth in this which must not
be ignored. To make everything of books in the develop
ment Of men and women is a greater mistake perhaps than
to make nothing of them, For life has teachings, and nat
nre out-of-dors has teachings, for which no man, if he miss
es them, can find compensation in books. We can say that,
frankly, to the contemner of books, and we yield no ground
in doing so; for then we turn upon him and say: 'lour
life, sir, to which you look for all the enlightenment of soul
and mind that you receive, is a brief span of a few tens
of years; the circle of human acquaintance in which you
are satisfied to make your whole study of mankind is a
little company of a few hundred men and women, at the
most the natural world for which you think to take suf-
icient lessons with your unassistcd eyes is made up of
some few bits of city streets and country lanes and seaside
sands. What can you, sir, know of life, compared with
the man who has had equal years of breath and conscious
ness with you, and who puts with that experience some
large, wide knowledge of forty centuries of human his
tory in the whole round world besides What can you
know of mankind and human nature compared with the
man who meets and talks with as many Of his ~neiehbors
in the flesh as yourself and who, beyond that, has com
partnership of mind with the kinely and quecnIy ones of all
generations that are dead! What can you learn from ma
turc compared to him who has Darwin and Dana and tluy-
ley and Tyndoll aud Gray for his tutors when he walks
abroad. and who, besides the home-rambling which he
shares in you, can 90 bird catching with John Burroughs
up and down the Atlantic States, or roaming with Thoreau
in the Maine woods. or strolling with Richard JefrIes in
English lanes and felds?''
Truth is, the booblcss man does not understand his
own less. He does not know the lcanncss in which his
mind is kept by want Of the feed which he rejects. He
locs not know what starving of Imagination and Of
thought he has inflicted upon himself lie has suffered his
interest in the things which make up Gods movable I'M
iycrsc to shrink until it reaches no farther than hi, eyes
can see and his ears can hear The books which he scorns
are tie telescopes and rchcctors and revcrbcrators of our
intellectual lifc, holding in themselves a hundred magical
powers for the overcoming of space and time, ami for Civ
ing the range Of knowledge which belongs to a really cul-
tiyatcd maiud. There is no equal substitute for them,
There is nothing else which will SO break for us the poor
hobblc Of everyday sights and sounds and habit, and tasks.
By which our thinking and feeling are naturally tcthercd
to a little worn round.