What the world wants is power; how to get that is the question.
Books are one source of power; but, necessarily, books are artificial.
That is why we cannot dispense with teachers in our schools,
professors in our colleges, preachers in our pulpits, orators on the
political platform. There is no real way of teaching but by word of
mouth. There is no real instruction but experience.
You see that the German universities have come back to the lecture
method exclusively--or did they ever depart from it? And they know
what they are about, those profound old German scholars. They have
created scientific scholarship. They have made what we once thought
history absurd, and have rewritten the story of the world.
But all this is _obiter dicta_. The point is that they know the value
of books as a source of power and learning, and they know their
limitations, too. So does the public. Public speaking will never
decline. It is Nature's method of instruction. You will listen with
profit to a speech which you cannot drive your mind to read.
It would seem, therefore, that the largest wisdom dictates
conservatism in mere reading. Read, of course, and deeply, widely,
thoroughly.
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