Ebook In Praise of Books

IT is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily found, and the best are but records, and not the things recorded and certainly there is dilettanteism enough, and books that are merely neutral and do nothing for us. In Plato's Gorgias, Socrates says, The ship master walks in a modest garb near the sea, after bringing his passengers from Egina or from Pontus, not thinking he has done anything extraordinary, and certainly knowing that his passengers are the same, and in no respect better than when he took them on board. So is it with books, for the most part they work no redemption in us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The vol ume is dear at a dollar, and, after reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did, without surprise, of a surly bank-direc tor, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.