Every Man His Own University

by Russell H. Conwell

IV

HOME READING

Carlyle says that a collection of books is a true university in these days. It might be added that often the smaller the collection the larger shall be the university.

Education derived from libraries is unsafe, for book-dissipation, as well as drunkenness, ends in debauchery. Toward the end of his long and wide-awake life Doctor Holmes advised a young correspondent to confine his reading to the Bible, Shakespeare, and a good dictionary. The list of men who have been lifted to higher regions of thought and feeling and action from reading any one of these three would be too long to be compressed within the covers of one book. Books are like two-edged swords—dangerous unless one knows how to use them; they either lead up or drag down, and we sink or rise to the level of the books we read. Every one reads, but how many read to advantage? Goethe, the greatest of all the very greatest Germans, said, "I have been learning how to read for the past fifty years, but have not yet succeeded."

The majority of readers resemble hour-glasses—their reading runs in and out, and leaves no traces; and some others are like housewives' jelly-bags—they pass all that is good, and retain only the refuse. At best, only a small percentage of our life is spent in school; the greater part of the remainder each must pass in the University of Daily Life, where our education is derived from experience gained through close observation in daily contact with our fellows, and from the fellowship of books. Fellowship fits the relation perfectly, for there must be intimate intercourse such as this word implies, or nothing. It is with books as with life—a man profits little from being merely acquainted with ten thousand, and he may be incalculably injured from his intercourse with them; but a few choice friends—often the fewer the better—bring a steady growth of higher spiritual power greater than can be had from all other influences combined.

So it is with books. Acquaintance with a thousand often renders a capable man impotent. But a few choice friends with whom he frequently and earnestly communes lift him in strength of intellect and will and tenderness and sweetness of feeling to be the peer of the worthiest.

The beginning of New England was the golden age of scholarship in America, for many of the founders of these colonies had been reared in English universities. Such was the struggle in these bleak and barren colonies for existence during the first years, that in a few generations the majority of their posterity were strangers to almost all the books of power and knowledge with which their forefathers were acquainted, and were forced to glean all they harvested from the Bible and the almanac—especially the almanac. The almanac was eagerly perused by every member of the family from the dawn of the year to its setting. The reputed thrift of the plain people in this corner of the great world is largely attributable to the lessons of the almanac—mainly Poor Richard's Almanac, which the Bostonian, Franklin, annually edited in Philadelphia for over a quarter of a century. His chief purpose was to drive home forcibly many lessons which might encourage the colonists to get the most out of their hard and isolated lives.

Peabody, the successful man of business and munificent philanthropist, said that an almanac and a jack-knife were the foundation of the education through which he ultimately did so much good for multitudes of his countrymen. It should be interesting and instructive to know how many more, during the "jack-knife epoch" in New England and the generations since that time, have been indebted to one book for the pluck and perseverance by which they have carved out a place of honor for themselves. Never were books so eagerly, so often, and so carefully read as these poor almanacs. Never, perhaps, has any other book except the Bible been so potent an influence in shaping the life of a nation and shaping it to a high place among the nations, whose beneficent influences have humanized the world. Many a writer has reminded us that the almanac was the text-book studied by our ancestry in beginning the enormous agricultural, commercial, mercantile, manufacturing, and financial interests which in four generations have placed us in front of the richest nations of the earth.

Think of the many millions of dollars invested in library-buildings and the many millions more invested in the books they shelter! Think of the five hundred millions spent annually in public education, and the hundreds of millions that have been put into college buildings and college breeding! Still, from all this stupendous investment there will never come men and women who will make any more out of their learning than thousands of men and women of colonial days who knew the contents of no books other than the Bible and the almanac.

The quality of the literary attainment of those reared in a library may be higher—and perhaps not; but wider and deeper self-knowledge, self-respect, self-confidence, self-culture, self-control, are the supreme objects of all life-struggle and educational struggle. Where a man gets the educational tools with which to accomplish all this is not at all important. If an almanac can help one man to get the same life-result as another man gets from the polishing of the greatest universities in the world, the almanac is the peer of the university. Whether materials as insignificant as the almanac have been used to attain just such results, the history of our country and of several other countries can readily prove. Three books made up the library of Lincoln, the rail-splitter, of Edison and Carnegie, the telegraph operators; but no three men of the nation were ever more successful in reaching the goals they set for themselves.