In order to realize to how large an extent the subjective existence of
man is made up of the material of books, we will pause a moment to
consider what literature does for us. Through literature we converse
with the great dead, with Plato, with Buddha, with Montaigne, with
Addison; we walk the streets of Babylon, of Athens, of Rome, of
Alexandria; we see great monuments, reared ages ago and long since
crumbled to the dust; we recreate the life of distant epochs, and thus
by comparison gauge the progress achieved by the men of today. Through
literature we learn wisdom from Aristotle, geometry from Euclid, law
from Justinian, morality from Christ and St. Paul. Literature makes the
physical features, the inhabitants, the climate, the products of the
antipodes as familiar as those of the neighboring county.