In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. He
who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against
calamity. Like Plato's disciple who has perceived a truth, 'he is
preserved from harm until another period.' In every man's memory, with
the hours when life culminated, are usually associated certain books
which met his views. Of a large and powerful class we might ask with
confidence, What is the event they most desire? What gift? What but the
book that shall come, which they have sought through all libraries,
through all languages, that shall be to their mature eyes what many a
tinsel-covered toy pamphlet was to their childhood, and shall speak to
the imagination? Our high respect for a well-read man is praise enough
of literature. If we encountered a man of rare intellect, we should ask
him what books he read. We expect a great man to be a good reader; or in
proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power.
And though such are a most difficult and exacting class, they are not
less eager. 'He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding,' said
Burke, 'doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his
own to the stature of that he contemplates.'
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. Our
debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our
protest or private addition so rare and insignificant,--and this
commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,--that, in a large
sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote.--R.
W. EMERSON. _Quotation and Originality._