22. "No previous century ever saw anything approaching to the increase in social complexity which has been wrought in America and Europe since 1789. In science and in the industrial arts the change has been greater than in the ten preceding centuries taken together. Contrast the seventeen centuries which it took to remodel the astronomy of Hipparchus with the forty years which it has taken to remodel the chemistry of Berzelius and the biology of Cuvier. * * * How small the difference between the clumsy wagons of the Tudor period and the mailcoach in which our grandfathers rode, compared to the difference between the mail-coach and the railway train! How rapid the changes in philosophic thinking since the time of the Encyclopedistes, in comparison with the slow though important changes which occurred between the epoch of Aristotle and the epoch of Descartes! In morality, both individual and national, and in general humanity of disposition and refinement of manners, the increased rapidity of change has been no less marked."--Cosmic Philosophy (Fiske), Vol. IV., p. 54, 55. 23. III. Nephi 20. 24. III. Nephi, chapter 21. 25. II. Nephi i: 5-12. 26. Ether i: 42. 27. III. Nephi 20: 14-20. 28. III. Nephi 20: 27, 28. 29. III. Nephi xxi: 11-25. CHAPTER XLIII. INTERNAL EVIDENCES.--THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK. "I can no more remember the books I have read than the meals I have eaten," said Emerson, "but they have made me." In this way the American philosopher recognizes the simple truth that the reading of books has something to do with the making of a man--that they affect the mind. A book has a spirit as distinctly as a painting or of a piece of sculpture has "feeling"--of course I mean a real work of art into which something from the soul of the artist has passed. The best thing about a painting or piece of sculpture is said to be that which cannot be described; so also the best part of a book is the spirit of it, which may not always be describable. And that elusive, mysterious quality we call its spirit may arise from something quite apart from its rhetoric, or logic or diction. It may be even as the voice of God: not in the strong wind, that rends the mountains and breaks in pieces the rocks before the Lord; not in the earthquake nor in the fire; but in the still, small voice which follows the wind and earthquake and fire. [1] So with a book: its spirit may owe its existence to its simple truth--to the spirit of truth in them that made it. "Do you ever think," said a writer in one of our popular magazines--"Do you ever think what is the effect of a book on your mind? * * * * Is your mind purer for it, or clearer? Has it filled your mind with good or bad images? Has it raised your standard or lowered it? * * * * * Every book you read and understand affects you for better or worse. It has some effect upon you, and if you are sane you are bound to find out what that is."