No one can explain the transmission of power from a book to a reader; but all history bears witness to the fact that such transmissions are made.

Sometimes, as during what is called the Revival of Learning, the transmission is so general and so genuine that the life of an entire society is visibly quickened and enlarged; indeed, it is not too much to say that an entire civilisation feels the effect.

The transmission of power, the transference of vitality, from books to individuals are so constant and common that they are matters of universal experience.

Most men of any considerable culture date the successive enlargements of their intellectual lives from the reading, at successive periods, of the books of insight and power,--the books that deal with life at firsthand.

There are, for instance, few men of a certain age who have read widely or deeply who do not recall with perennial enthusiasm the days when Carlyle and Emerson fell into their hands.