The Importance of Reading is Incalculable, by Joseph Barker 1847

 

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The importance of reading is incalculable, by Joseph Barker 1847

Who will question the usefulness of the art of reading? Where is the orthodox man himself who will say that inability to read is not a calamity, or that the ability to read is not a great blessing? The importance of reading is incalculable! If a man cannot read, he is shut out from one of the most important means of gaining knowledge. If a man cannot read, he is unable to peruse the sacred Scriptures themselves. Reading is one of the most important arts in existence. To be unable to read is one of the greatest calamities under which a man can labour. To be able to read is one of the greatest blessings that a man can enjoy. The art of reading has been to me both one of the greatest advantages and one of the greatest pleasures of my life. The eyes themselves are not of greater service to the body, than the power of reading to the mind. The first thing therefore which we propose to teach is a good thing. In enabling people to read the Scriptures, and to read such other books as are calculated to give them knowledge and to minister to their comfort and improvement, we must be doing good.

The second thing we propose to teach is writing. Writing is of as much importance as reading. In one sense it is more important. Reading is dependant upon writing. There can be no reading without writing. If no one writes books, no one can read books. It is as important therefore that people should be able to write, as it is that they should be able to read.

The ability to write is calculated to prove a blessing to people in various ways. It is calculated to prove a blessing and a benefit to them in temporal matters. The man that can write is both better able to help himself, and better able to help and serve others, than the man that cannot write. The man that cannot write finds himself labouring under disadvantages innumerable. He cannot keep an account of his own labour. He cannot write down the directions which he may receive with respect to his journey or his work. He cannot correspond with his absent friends. He cannot send a word of counsel or advice, of rebuke or consolation, to any one at a distance. He cannot keep a record of his thoughts. He cannot put down the instructions which he receives from books or lecturers, from private friends or from public teachers. The man that cannot write cannot read writing. If he receives a letter from a friend, it must be entrusted to another to be read. And if he wishes to send a letter to another, he must have the expense and inconvenience of employing another party.

The man who cannot write is shut out from one of the most important means of usefulness to his fellow-men. There is no way in which men have more effectually and extensively served the interests of truth and righteousness, and promoted the welfare of their fellow-men, than by writing. What a blessing has the Bible been to mankind! Yet we are indebted for the Bible to the art of writing. What infinite blessings have been conferred upon the world by other good books! Yet for all those books we have been indebted to the art of writing. What a vast and happy influence are books and tracts exerting upon the world at this moment! Yet for all those books and tracts we are indebted to the art of writing. How many dark minds are illumined, how many sad hearts are cheered, how many unbelievers are convinced, how many erring Christians are instructed, how many feeble and irresolute souls are strengthened by the instrumentality of books and tracts! Yet for all those books and tracts we are indebted to the art of writing. What wonders books are working both in this country and in Europe at large! What wonders they are working in America! What a mighty revolution they are effecting both in politics, in commerce, and in religion! Yet for all these wondrous effects we are indebted to the art of writing.

Writing enables a man to speak to the most distant inhabitants of the earth, and to the remotest ages of time. The art of writing enables a man to speak to millions at a time, and to speak to them unceasingly for hours and days and weeks, aye, even for months and years together. The arts of reading and writing together, enable us to converse with the distant and with the dead; with the highest and best of our race; with the greatest philanthropists and the brightest geniuses; with men of all ranks; with the skillful in every branch of knowledge, and in every useful art. The arts of writing and reading make man's social and domestic circle as wide as the world, and enable him to carry along with him on his journey without expense and without inconvenience, the best and the brightest companions which have ever adorned the earth, or glorified human nature. But if we were to speak for days we should not be able to unfold or to display at full the advantages which the art of writing confers upon men. worth is infinite. The blessings which it has conferred upon the human race can never be numbered. The blessing's which it is now conferring upon the human race can never be numbered. The good that it is doing at this moment is beyond all conception; and the good that it will continue to do will be the same: it will be both boundless and eternal.

In teaching people to write therefore we are conferring upon them one of the greatest blessings which man can enjoy. We are, in fact, raising man to a higher rank of being. We are making him almost as much superior to a man who cannot read and write, as a man is superior to a brute. We are giving him a power that knows no limits. We are imparting to him a blessing which is inestimable. We are fitting him for usefulness to his fellow-creatures without all bounds. Where would Bunyan have been, -Where would Milton, or Locke, or Newton have been, if it had not been for the ability to read and to write? Where would have been the bright names of Penn, of Howard, and of Fox, if it had not been for their ability to read and to write? Where would have been all those rich and boundless treasures which we find in our works of philosophy, our works of poetry, our books of history, our writings in theology, in morality, and in science,

I say, where would all these rich, these vast, these invaluable treasures have been, if it had not been for the art of writing? They would either never have been created, or would have been buried in darkness, and never seen the light. It is the art of writing that has created those treasures; it is the art of writing that has preserved those treasures. On the art of writing we are dependant for the spiritual wealth of the world. And not for the spiritual wealth of the world only, but for the wealth of the world in general. To the art of writing we are indebted for the blessings of freedom, of commerce, and of peace. To the art of writing we are indebted, though it may seem strange to some, for the cultivation of our fields, for our crops of corn, for the flowers and fruits in our gardens, for the roads on which we travel, for the quick dispatch of our letters, for the rapid railway train, and for the electric Telegraph. But on this subject I have published my sentiments at large in the pamphlet entitled Mercy Triumphant.' It is not therefore necessary to say more on this subject here. There are few, we imagine, who will call in question the great usefulness of the art of writing. There are few, we imagine, but what will acknowledge, that in teaching people to write we are imparting to them a most important power, and conferring upon them a great advantage, an invaluable blessing. ing. There are few, in short, but what will acknowledge, if they are candid, and will consider the subject, that in teaching people to write, we are engaged in doing good; great good.

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Jane Eyre (and the Lindy Effect) on This Day in History

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This Day In History: The novel Jane Eyre was published in London on this day in 1847. It, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous romance novels. The fact that it has been around for such a long time brings me to the Lindy Effect. The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's Law) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a book or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence or competition and greater odds of continued existence into the future.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb stated: "If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not 'aging' like persons, but 'aging' in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!"

In other words, if you only have a limited time for reading, then read a book that has been popular for a very long time rather than reading the latest books on the New York Times bestseller list. Jane Eyre has been in print for 170 years, and there is a reason for that and we can expect, according to the Lindy Effect, to have it around for another 170 years. In other words, read Orwell's 1984 rather than anything by Michael Wolff. Read Atlas Shrugged instead of White Fragility. Read The Count of Montecristo instead of The Hate U Give.

See also The Best Victorian Literature, Over 100 Books to Download 

The Index of Prohibited Books on This Day in History

 

This Day In History: The Vatican announces the abolition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("index of prohibited books") on this day in 1966. The Index was a list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former Dicastery of the Roman Curia), and Catholics were forbidden to read them.

There were attempts to ban heretical books throughout church history, notably in the ninth-century Decretum Glasianum; the Index of Prohibited Books of 1560 banned thousands of book titles and blacklisted publications, including the works of Europe's intellectual elites. The 20th and final edition of the index appeared in 1948, and the Index was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI.

The Index condemned religious and secular texts alike, grading works by the degree to which they were seen to be repugnant to the church. The aim of the list was to protect church members from reading theologically, culturally, or politically disruptive books. Such books included works by astronomers, such as the German Johannes Kepler's Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (published in three volumes from 1618 to 1621), which was on the Index from 1621 to 1835, works by philosophers, such as the Prussian Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and editions and translations of the Bible that had not been approved. Editions of the Index also contained the rules of the Church relating to the reading, selling, and preemptive censorship of books.

Noteworthy figures on the Index include Simone de Beauvoir, Nicolas Malebranche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Nikos Kazantzakis, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Desiderius Erasmus, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius. The first woman to be placed on the list was Magdalena Haymairus in 1569, who was listed for her children's book Die sontegliche Episteln über das gantze Jar in gesangsweis gestellt (Sunday Epistles on the whole Year, put to the test). Contrary to a popular misconception, Charles Darwin's works were never included.

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Chinese Censorship of Books on This Day in History

This Day in History: The Chinese government removed a decade old ban on William Shakespeare's work on this day in 1977. There are now Chinese language editions of the Bard. China has also banned Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was also banned at Woodsville High School in Haverhill, New Hampshire in 1900. D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was also banned in China, but then that book may be the most banned book of all time. Even Dr Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham was banned for its portrayal of early Marxism (I missed that when I read it). Oddly enough, you can buy George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 in China, but you are not allowed to talk about them on social media.

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As far as I can tell, the country with the most banned books is not China, but rather Singapore, and most of those books are pro-Communist...such as the writings of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

As for the Western World, literary researchers agree that during the 20th century Australia was considered one of the harshest censors. Also, some activists consider Australia's laws on Internet censorship to be among the most restrictive in the west. That Australia has a tough authoritarian streak was in full display with their severe lockdowns during the epidemic scare in 2020/2021.

In Russia, both the Koran and the New World Translation Bible are banned. 

The Satanic Verses is a book banned in many Muslim countries, and one book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F#@k, is banned in the UAE simply for its title.

With the recent Wokeness fad, we will continue to see more banning of books, as we have seen recently with To Kill a Mockingbird, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and certain Dr Seuss books. 

See also History of Book Censorship By Frederick W. Hamilton 1918
https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2016/04/history-of-book-censorship-by-frederick.html

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See also: Free Speech IS the Speech You Hate - Quotations on Freedom of Expression

For the Love of Books - Quotes on the Printed Word

"Books are friends whose society is extremely agreeable to me."—Petrarch.

"In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. "—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks
Reading picture story-books?"
—Robert L. Stevenson.

"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors." —Dr. Samuel Johnson.

"The enterprise of certain enlightened publishers has taught them to work for the million and that is a very important fact." —Wm. E. Gladstone.

"In a government like ours, we must look to the intelligence of the masses for the safety and permanence of our free institutions. "—George Washington.

"I pity the man who is too poor and mean to buy books for his children. You might as well refuse them bread and meat." —John Calhoun.

"A wise mother and good books enabled me to suoceed in life. She was poor, but never too poor to buy books. It is a mean sort of poverty that starves the mind to feed the body."—Henry Clay.

"Schools teach as the rudiments of language, but books teach us how to think. Therefore, no one can be truly educated unless he is a reader of books. "—Benjamin Franklin.

"I cannot think the glorious world of mind
  Embalmed in books, which I can only see
In patches, though I read my moments blind
  Is to be lost to me.
I have a thought that, as we live eleswhere,
  So will those dear creations of the brain;
That what I lose unread, I'll find, and there
  Take up my joy again.
O then the bliss of blisses, to be freed
  From all wants by which the world is driven;
With liberty and endless time to read
The libraries of Heaven!"
—Robert Leighton.

"I favor a general system of public education, also a proper encouragment of the circulation of books among the people, for no one can be truly educated unless he reads and thinks."-Thomas Jefferson.

"Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant during the frosts of winter."—Horace Mann.

"In a polite age, almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the press than from the pulpit." Oliver Goldsmith.

"Educate! Educate! Educate! Send books throughout the land; educate the people, and we can bid defiance to the schemes of tyrants."—Patriok Henry.

"My opportunities in youth for obtaining an education were limited but I had the great good fortune of being well supplied with useful books. These gave me my success in life."—Daniel Webster.

"The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology or defence. It is a good thing in itself; a possession to be thankful for, to rejoice over, to be proud of, and to sing praises for. With this love in his heart no man is ever poor; ever without friends, or the means of making his life lovely, beautiful, and happy."—J. A. Langford.

"To me, indeed, the light of the sun, the day, and light itself, would be joyless and bitter, if I had not something to read; if I lacked the works of the most illustrious men; for, in comparison with their preciousness and delight, wealth and pleasure, and all the things that men prize, are mean and trifling." —Leo Allatius.

"A taste for books is the pleasure and glory of my life. I would not exchange it for the glory of the Indies."—Gibbon.

"Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight."—Baron Monteequien.

"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend; when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."--Oliver Goldsmith.

"Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select the more enjoyable."—A. Bronson Alcott.

"Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burthen to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares, and our passions; and lay our disappointments asleep."—Jeremy Collier.

"Books are the depository of everything that is most honorable to man. Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms. He that loves reading has everything within his reach."—William Godwin.

"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pats to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasures that God has prepared for his creatures. Other pleasures may be more ecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade."—Anthony Trollope.

"Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!—a message to us from the dead—from human soul, whom we never saw, who lived, perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, offer their hearts to us as brothers."—Charles Kingsley.

"What joy is there in a good book, writ by some great master of thought, who breaks into beauty, as in summer the meadow into grass and dandelions and violets, with geraniums and manifold sweetness." —Theodore Parker

"Books, dear books, ever been, and are my comforts, morn and night, adversity, prosperity, at home, abroad, health, sickness—good or ill report, the same firm friends; the same refreshments rich, and source of consolation."—William Dodd.

"In books we find the dead as it were living; in books we forsee things to come. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger. If you approach them, they are not asleep, if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble, if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you." —Richard De Bury.

"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it servicable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so than you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs for her store. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries!"—John Buskin.

"Books make up no small part of human happiness."—Frederick the Great.

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Anthony Trollope on Reading and Books

"If he was in any degree a man of genius (and I hold that he was), it was in virtue of this happy, instinctive perception of human varieties. His knowledge of the stuff we are made of, his observation of the common behaviour of men and women, was not reasoned nor acquired, not even particularly studied. All human doings deeply interested him, human life, to his mind, was a perpetual story; but he never attempted to take the so-called scientific view, the view which has lately found ingenious advocates among the countrymen and successors of Balzac. He had no airs of being able to tell you why people in a given situation would conduct themselves in a particular way; it was enough for him that he felt their feelings and struck the right note, because he had, as it were, a good ear. If he was a knowing psychologist he was so by grace; he was just and true without apparatus and without effort. He must have had a great taste for the moral question; he evidently believed that this is the basis of the interest of fiction." ~Henry James

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Anthony Trollope on Reading and Books:

The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?...Was ever anything so civil?

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.

To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.

There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Of all needs a book has,
the chief need is to be readable.

Book love... is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.

Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

Who would ever think of learning to live out of an English novel?

The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good.

The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum.

As for reading, I doubt whether she did much better by the sea-side than she had done in the town. Men and women say that they will read, and think so—those, I mean, who have acquired no habit of reading—believing the work to be, of all works, the easiest. It may be work, they think, but of all works it must be the easiest of achievement. Given the absolute faculty of reading, the task of going through the pages of a book must be, of all tasks, the most certainly within the grasp of the man or woman who attempts it. Alas! no; if the habit be not there, of all tasks it is the most difficult.

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational.

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows.

A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.

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