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a unique type. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens might as well
be quite illiterate, so far as the use that they make of their ability to
read is concerned. These persons are not all uneducated; they possess and
are still acquiring much knowledge, but since leaving school they have
acquired it chiefly by personal experience and by word of mouth. Is it
possible that they are right? May it be that to read books is unnecessary
and superfluous?

There has been some effort of late to depreciate the book--to insist on
its inadequacy and on the impracticality of the knowledge that it conveys.
"Book-learning" has always been derided more or less by so-called
"practical men". A recent series of comic pictures in the newspapers makes
this clear. It is about "Book-taught Bilkins". Bilkins tries to do
everything by a book. He raises vegetables, builds furniture, runs a
chicken farm, all by the directions contained in books, and meets with
ignominious failure. He makes himself, in fact, very ridiculous in every
instance and thousands of readers laugh at him and his absurd books. They
inwardly resolve, doubtless, that they will be practical and will pay no
attention to books. Are they right? Is the information contained in books
always useless and absurd, while that obtained by experience or by talking
to one's neighbor is always correct and valuable?

Many of our foremost educators are displeased with the book. They are
throwing it aside for the lecture, for laboratory work, for personal
research and experiment. Does this mean that the book, as a tool of the
teacher, will have to go?

What it all certainly does mean is that we ought to pause a minute and
think about the book, about what it does and what it can not do. This
means that we ought to consider a little the whole subject of written as
distinguished from spoken language. Why should we have two languages--as
we practically do--one to be interpreted by the ear and the other by the
eye? Could we or should we abandon either? What are the advantages and
what the limitations of each? We are so accustomed to looking upon the
printed page, to reading newspapers, books, and advertisements, to sending
and receiving letters, written or typewritten, that we are apt to forget
that all this is not part of the natural order, except in the sense that
all inventions and creations of the human brain are natural. Written
language is a conscious invention of man; spoken language