American inventions and inventors . sharp, asdefinite, as full and complete, as is the language of , it has a great advantage over speech. Words canbe spoken only to a person immediately present, but wordscan be written and conveyed to one who is absent. Nomatter how far apart two persons are, each can communicatehis ideas to the other just as well as if they were near. This written language has still greater usefulness. Bymeans of it wise men of all countries who have had greatthoughts, thoughts of value to the whole human race, havebeen enabled to put those thoughts into a per
American inventions and inventors . sharp, asdefinite, as full and complete, as is the language of , it has a great advantage over speech. Words canbe spoken only to a person immediately present, but wordscan be written and conveyed to one who is absent. Nomatter how far apart two persons are, each can communicatehis ideas to the other just as well as if they were near. This written language has still greater usefulness. Bymeans of it wise men of all countries who have had greatthoughts, thoughts of value to the whole human race, havebeen enabled to put those thoughts into a permanent they have been preserved and handed down from gen-eration to generation, so that we inherit to-day the wealth ofall the ages. We can make ourselves familiar with the greatthoughts uttered by Jesus, by Socrates, Aristotle, Shake-speare, Milton, Burke, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster,Emerson, Longfellow, and countless others, so that they be-come our own property. Moreover, when the eye gathers LETTERS—LANGUAGE. 249. Up these grand truths from the printed page, they are notabsorbed, they still remain there. They may be used andtransmitted again and again in the same book and upon thesame page, even to future generations. On one occasion King Solomon said: Of making manybooks there is no end, and much study is a weariness of theflesh. The second partof this sentence is cer-tainly very true, but thatis not saying anythingagainst study, for any-thing that is worth doingis a cause of we get weary thebest thing is to get thor-oughly rested, and afterthat to work until we be-come weary again. It does not injure a strong, well person to get healthily tired; onthe contrary, the weariness which comes from normal exer-cise of the hands or the brain is better than inactive ease. What did Solomon mean when he made this sage remark,Of making many books there is no end? Under whatcircumstances was the remark made? We may not be ableto answer the last question li
Size: 1869px × 1336px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpubli, booksubjectinventions
