One arrives at knowledge by the assimilation of facts and principles,
or by the assimilation of truth itself. Three sources of knowledge are
experience, conversation, and reading. Experience leads one slowly
to knowledge, is limited entirely to the path over which one has passed,
and is a "dear teacher." To acquire knowledge by conversation is to
put one at the mercy of his associates, making him dependent upon
their good favor, truthfulness, and learning. But reading places one
in direct communication with the wisest and best persons of all time.
To acquire knowledge by reading is to defy time and space, persons
and circumstances, at least, in our day of many and inexpensive books.
Through books facts live, principles operate, justice acts, the light of
philosophy gleams, wit flashes, God speaks. Every book-lover agrees
with Channing: "No matter how poor I am..if the sacred writers will
enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my
threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the
words of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin
to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of
intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though
excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live."
Kingsley says: "Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful
Than a book!--a message to us from the dead,--from human souls whom
we never saw, who lived, perhaps, thousands of miles away; and yet
these, in those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, terrify us,
teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers..If they are
good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, farming,
trade, or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all
things, the Teacher of all truth." The wide range of truth secured through
reading acts in two ways upon the reader. It spiritualizes his character,
and it makes him mighty in action. Knowledge on almost any subject
has a marked tendency to sharpen one's wits, to refine his tastes, to