The Beginnings of LibrariesRichardson, Ernest Cushing
History
The Beginnings of Libraries
Richardson, Ernest Cushing
Libraries -- History -- To 400
What is meant here by the memory library refers to the modern
psychological study of inward speech and inward handwriting. This
accounts for the existence of inward books and collections of books, and
a collection of inward books is obviously a real library. It makes
little difference where or how these are kept in the brain. They
doubtless imply a library economy at least as different from that of
printed and bound books as the books themselves are different from
papyrus rolls, clay tablets, or phonographic records, but it is a real
collection of books and the psychological study of the place and manner
of their housing and the method of their arrangement and prompt service
to the owner for his use is not a matter of analogy or figure of speech.
The essence of the book is a fixed form of words. The point is that a
certain form of words worked into a unity is preserved in exactly that
form. The author looks at it as a whole, prunes, corrects, substitutes
better words for inferior ones, and generally works over it as a man
works over a painting or statue. At the end of the process when the book
is finished it is a fixed form of words, a new creation, an
individuality. The ordinary habit of thought and conversation does not
reach this point of fixed forms of words although in the case of very
retentive memories, where the complete verbal form of conversation is
remembered, it approaches it. In general men seldom remember the exact
phraseology when they listen to a sermon or a story. On the other hand,
however, the actor or the professional story teller can summon at will
the exact verbal form of a great number of works and each of these works
is properly a book. This permanent fixing of form undoubtedly implies
some substance in which the words are recorded, but if that substance is
the human brain the result is no less a book, a real record in the real
substance, than if recorded in outward substance such as stone or ink.
The practice of keeping such inward records of exact fixed forms of
words is not only the oldest form of record keeping and one extensively
practised in illiterate periods, but it is commonly practised in modern
life by orators who speak without notes, and as a method for the
teaching of children before they learn to read (“memorizing”) as well as
afterwards in the schools.
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