Without thought, no language is possible. It is equally true that without language, no growth of thought is possible. It is futile to try to determine which is first, language or thought. The two are entirely necessary to each other and make possible social and individual development.
Every time that you add a word to your vocabulary, you have added to your mental equipment. You have also added greatly to your power of enjoyment. Through these words you will come into a new relationship to your fellow men. Each new word enlarges the circle of your acquaintance. A knowledge of language brings us into a circle of wonderful friends. When we have learned to read we need never more be lonely. Some one has written in a book somewhere just the thing we are hungry for at this moment.
In the pages of a book we can meet and talk with the great souls who have written in these pages their life's experience. No matter what mood you are in, you can find a book to suit that mood. No matter what your need, there is a book which meets that need. Form the habit of reading and you will find it a wonderful source of pleasure and of profit.
Nor do we need to be barred because of our lack of educational advantages in our youth. Buckle, the author of the greatest history that has ever been written, left school at the age of fourteen, and it is said that at that age, except a smattering of mathematics, he knew only how to read; but when he died at the age of forty, this man, who did not know his letters when he was eight years old, could read and write seven languages and was familiar with ten or twelve more. He had written a wonderful book and had become a teacher of teachers. Engraven upon his marble altar tomb is the following couplet:
"The written word remains long after the writer.
The writer is resting under the earth, but his words endure."
Good books are so cheap nowadays that they are within the reach of every one of us. Let us not be content to live in the narrow world of work and worry. Let us forget the struggle occasionally in the reading of books, and let us prepare ourselves, by reading and studying, for the battle for the emancipation of the workers of the world.
Yours for Education,
THE PEOPLE'S COLLEGE.