Books are chiefly useful as they help us to interpret what we see and
experience. When they absorb men, as they sometimes do, and turn them
from observation of nature and life, they generate a learned folly, for
which the plain sense of the labourer could not be exchanged but at
great loss. It deserves attention that the greatest men have been formed
without the studies which at present are thought by many most needful to
improvement. Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, never heard the name of
chemistry, and knew less of the solar system than a boy in our common
schools. Not that these sciences are unimportant; but the lesson is,
that human improvement never wants the means, where the purpose of it is
deep and earnest in the soul.--W. E. CHANNING. _Self-Culture._