historical perspectives on the role of the book in society

Historical Perspectives on the Role of the Book in SocietyAuthor(s): Howard W. WingerSource: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct., 1955), pp. 293-305Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4304464 .

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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ROLE

OF THE BOOK IN SOCIETY

HOWARD W. WINGER

O NCE in the bygone ages there was a time, it is supposed (for nothing much is known about it),

when men did not know how to write and had no books. It was presumably a happy time. When a wise old man died there were no memoirs to publish or read, no papers to edit, no variant texts with their vexing problems of compositor determination. When the harassed house- holder tired of paying the rent, there was no lease to make him pay. When the weary breadwinner retired to the lake for a week of fishing and swimming, no letters or directives sought him out to distract his mind from his rustic pleas- ures. Knowledge was no more burden- some than the fleeting moment or more expansive than the circle of good yelling distance.

Then writing was invented. This was a revolutionary development in communications. The invention consisted of a system of signs which made it possible to reduce human speech to more or less permanent graphic records. Man ex- perimented with inscribing these signs on almost any surface that would take a mark and with any material that would submit to pen, stylus, or chisel. He tried bark, stone, metal, clay, leather, and papyrus. His first written messages tended to be private and commercial in nature. Later, writing went beyond this private, commercial character, and messages were inscribed with the original intent of publication. Public messages were written on cliffs and monuments,

over portals and doorways, and on wheat bins, coffins, and other containers. Then came the ultimate refinement. It was found that public messages of considerable length could be put on materials that were light enough and compact enough, when ingeniously arranged, to be carried around conveniently from place to place. This was the book-a graphic record of human speech, so manufactured as to be easily portable and primarily intended to be a vehicle of public communication:

Since the days of the unknown first exemplar, the book has experienced a long history. Not all men, not even all writers of books, have approved of it. Only a few hundred years after its invention, Ecclesiastes exclaimed: "Of the making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness to the flesh!" It is possible to impute to that gifted writer a renunciation of all human knowledge, but undeniably the book brought some distressing changes in man's crusted intellectual environment. Knowledge pressed in on him from the past and from the far places beyond the reach of the human voice. The pressure was unremitting and insistent, not to be forgotten when the voice of the speaker faded in the distance or was choked in the dust of time. The book was physically present and remained, for those afflicted with an intellectual con- science, to demand study until its message was understood. It was, in short, a new means for clearing all the barriers

293



294 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

thiat prevent communications between peoples-- the barrier of time, which stands between generations; the barrier of space, which separates contempo- raries; and the psychological barrier, which arises from the differences in symbolic usage and requires considerable adaptation on the part of the communi- cator or serious study on the part of the receiver to overcome. These natural barriers are not entirely without some benefit to the human organism, and the pressure following their disruption has brought more than one protest in the last twenty-five hundred years. Never- theless, of the making of many books there is still no end!

My concern is with the role that the book, after it really arrived as a usable means of public communication, has played in the public diffusion of knowledge. In trying to assess the book in this continuous process, it is necessary to consider it in relation to other agencies of communication. Because the book is primarily an instrument of verbal communication, it is most convenient to consider it in relation to the public oral channels by which verbal messages are also conveyed- the stage, the lecture platform, the pulpit, the rostrum, and the public recitation. Other nonverbal systems exist and are important- in the public diffusion of knowledge. Music, the pantomime, the map, the diagram, and the picture provide different ways of encoding the neuromuscular responses with which all communication between people begins, and these various systems are frequently used in conjunction with verbal communication. The gesture en- hances the words of the actor and the orator. The diagram or picture may be essential to the understanding of the book. A book written in musical nota- tion is not a verbal instrument at all.

Nevertheless, the word is an important thing, and it provides an adequate scope for a short paper dealing with the whole history of book production and use.

THE ROLE OF THE BOOK IN

ANCIENT GREECE

The ancient Greek book is of great importance to the inheritors of Western civilization. Some artifactual remnants of it survive. Written onl papyrus scrolls from 5 to 10 inches high and seldom ex- ceeding 20 feet in length, they are unpre- tentious in appearance despite the importance of the verbal messages they contain. Unlike the large and sumptuous Egyptian ceremonial scrolls, they were generally lacking in ornamentation and illustration and were produced to present a text rather than for a show of magnif- icence. This workaday appearance has been held to show that the Greeks made books for practical use in the study of texts and that they were book-readers as well as bookmakers.

Fortunately, the extant texts of Greek writers exceed in volume, interest, and cultural value the artifactual remnants of Greek books. Recorded in an alphabet which is still in use, the secret of reading these texts was never lost. Some interest in their content has been constant since their first composition, and copies made of them from century to century have preserved a good 10 per cent of what tlhe Greeks wrote. Whether it is the best or not, nobody can know.

Our current debt to the Greek book for preserving these valuable specimens of Greek thought is so great and so obvious that we can pass it without further mention. It is the debt we owe to the book for preserving the knowledge of all past ages. XVherever books did not exist or where, as with music, a system of graphic coding was late in developing,



THE ROLE OF THE BOOK IN SOCIETY 295

our information on what men discovered and how they expressed themselves is very shadowy. Because our knowledge of Greece is based on the book, however, we sometimes think of the Greeks as being as much dependent on the book for their contemporary diffusion of knowledge as we are for the ancient record. This betrays a lack of historical perspective. The Greeks had ears as well as eyes, and their eyes were not glued to a papyrus scroll. In their time they used other channels of public communication besides the book.

Greek intellectual history is conven- tionally divided into two periods. Before Aristotle the favorite method of diffus- ing knowledge was by talk. After him the Greeks turned to books. This was a matter of emphasis. Aristotle neither taught the Greeks to write nor did he strike them dumb with his wisdom. Before his time, though books were made, authors composed their works for oral presentation. As Moses Hadas has written, "All classic literature, it may be said, is conceived of as conversation with, or an address to, an audience."'' The great tragedies and the old comedies were produced in theaters seating as many as forty thousand spectators. The classic orators addressed assemblies comprising all the citizens of their town. Professional rhapsodists recited the poems of Homer and other poets to appreciative listeners. Herodo- tus publicly read his histories. The atti- tude of Socrates toward books is well known: he wrote no books himself, and he regarded them as "greatly inferior to the spoken word as a means of edu- cation."2 Books were made to preserve

important texts and to pass the time for travelers who were unable to attend the literary competitions, but they were secondary to the spoken word as a means of cultural diffusion.

This, let it be said, occurred at a period of high cultural development. The classic Greek diffusion was not an example of the sketchy dissemination of a crude and primitive scholarship. It took place in the great days of the city- states. It involved thinkers and authors whose names stand among the greatest. Talk, primarily or alone, spread the Greek state of mind to all the beaches of the Mediterranean. Of course, as has been pointed out above, we today are dependent for our knowledge of the ideas that circulated on the books that were made. But the contemporary talk was magnificent.

Aristotle and his successors departed from this tradition. Unlike Socrates, Aristotle collected a notable library and wrote encyclopedic books, for which he drew extensively from other books. The Alexandrian poets composed works filled with obscure allusions.3 Both the results of the antiquarian's labors and the new discoveries of science were likely to be presented in a poem. The great libraries grew at Alexandria and Pergamum. Tex- tual criticism, the study of language, the collection, classification, and ordering of facts, became the task of scholarship. As the great days of Athens moved further into the past, even the orators ceased to speak, and the copies of their great orations became textbooks for schoolboys.

Many possible explanations occur for this shift to books. Inasmuch as the book owes its existence to its usefulness as an instrument of communication, the explanations must be sought in the

1 Ancilla to Classical Reading (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), p. 50.

2 F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome (2d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 21 n.; quotation from Plato's Phaedrus, I Hadas, op. cit., p. 54.




changed situations requiring the communication of knowledge. For one thing, there was a decline in the effective popular assembly when the Alexandrian king- doms replaced the self-governring city- states. This development stilled the oratorical eloquence. Furthermore, the assembly never existed which could ab- sorb the detailed factual data of the new scholarship. The comparatively small number of specialists who were inter- ested were separated by considerable distances, so that it was easier to make books to carry the message than to gather the men in a meeting, even if the need of a record for referral had not been so great. In fact, the new scholarship of books has all the characteristics of selec- tive specialized interest. The broader public still used the oral media. Although no new trio of tragedians arose to take the place of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the stage continued its popularity. The old plays were re-enacted, and the new comedy of Menander received lavish praise. One school of philosophy, Stoicism, was named after the porches from which the teachers spoke, proving that the lecture was still in force.

In addition to the characteristics of specialization, the maturity of Greek knowledge had its effect. With all that had been thought and said and discovered, there was too much for the oral tradition. While Socrates might afford to take his predecessors lightly, the Alexandrians could not so easily ignore him as he had been reported by Plato. Their great textual labors show their concern over the preservation of the exact record of a worth-while body of knowledge. For that the book was the best instrument they had,

THE ROMAN USE OF BOOKS

The Romans appropriated the Greek book, both actually and figuratively. Their conquering generals carried Greek book collections home, to start public libraries in Rome. When the Latin authors emulated these models, the libraries added a Latin book stock to the Greek collections.4 Books for these Roman authors and collectors resulted in an invasion of the aesthetic and re- flective spheres which transcended the famed Roman concern with practical affairs. A very practical Roman, Julius Caesar, formulated a plan for the ex- ploitation of Greek book plunder in the establishment of libraries in Rome. He did not live to carry out his plan, but his successors liberally endowed the city with libraries.

There was a flourishing book trade in the Roman Empire, dealing with Greek and Latin literature.5 Numerous quota- tions from Latin authors show that books were available for those who cared to buy them. Books formed the topic of conversation at some dinner parties and were occasionally presented as gifts. Schoolboys studied Virgil and Homer. From these references it would be easy to exaggerate the importance of the book as a source of information or the extent to which reading was general. The same authors who talked with such animation of their editions and their booksellers were equally proud of their success at the public recitation of their works.6 Except for the all-embracing

'Carl Wendel, "Das griechisch-r6mische Alter- tur," in Handbuch der Bibliothekswissenschaf , ed. Fritz Milkau, Vol. III: Geschichte der Bibliotheken (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1940), pp. 33-34.

6 Felix Reichmann, "The Book Trade in the Rom- an Empire," Library Quarterly, VIII (January, 1938), 43.

Hadas, op. cit., pp. 60-64.




trade decrees of Diocletian, most of the references to the book trade came from authors who had books on the market.

The development of a great legal scholarship was a more indigenous Ro- man achievement than the quick flower- ing an(I comparatively early demise of the Latin literary culture. The varying sources from which the average citizen gained his information about such a technical subject as the law can only be assumed from the opportunities which are known to have been open to him and the comparative ease with which he could take advantage of them. Although law books existed, he probably did not read them. The law was active, practical, daily administered. This afforded him an effortless, though perhaps not always painless, way of learning. It was an aim of the Roman ijus gentium, later identi- fied with the ius naturae, to find certain common principles of justice based on the way in which the many diverse peoples of the broad empire dealt with one another. Thus the law developed from the folkways, customs, mores, and institutions, and the citizen could learn it through his daily and undeliberate contacts with his social environment. A more specialized channel existed for him in the Praetor's formal proclamation at the beginning of his term of office of the principles on which he would enforce the law. For further special information he could attend the court or listen to the gossip of those who had attended.

Lawyers had to have a special knowledge of the law. Books existed to supply them with this and to supplement the oral training which they received from a great advocate or from attendance at the lectures in one of the law schools. These books included the records of the sources of the law-the edicts, statutes,

institutions, and decrees. They also included the written opinions of the juris- consults, who, in connection with an actual case or in response to questions put to them about theoretical cases, would render an opinion on the applica- tion of the law. The addition that such books could make to the knowledge of the average citizen would result from his hearing them used by judge and coun- selor when he attended court, but their main function was to preserve for the specialist an accurate record of what had been said and done, so that the law could develop logically from case to case and from opinion to opinion. This body of writing grew so profuse and so contradic- tory that Justinian in the sixth century employed a corps of scholars to codify it.

Christianity is another cultural system which can be called Roman, if a body of knowledge can be called Roman which developed in the Roman Empire and eventually affected in one way or another all the citizens of the empire. This religion arose in a remote province of the empire a few years after it ceased to be a republic. Its basic tenets were simple enough to permit covering them in a very short creed. It was an exclusive system, requiring all believers to renounce all other religions and to refuse to take part in their ceremonies. This dangerous practice led to some martyr- doms. Nevertheless, the religion spread over the empire, eventually winning both town and country and attracting the allegiance of every social class. To achieve all this, the Christians had to tell their story, explain it, persuade people to accept it, and preserve it from un- recognizable alteration. The high meas- ure of their success was a notable achievement in communication.

Although it was based on the Old




Testament writings of the Jews, Chris- tianity was not at the outset a very bookish religion. As far as is known, Jesus wrote no books, and the effect of much early Christian teaching was to diminish the importance of the Jewish records. The spread of the religion began under the leadership of the apostles, who made great practical use of the Jewish assemblies. They visited the Jewish colonies throughout the empire, and at the first opportunity after their arrival in a new city they went to the synagogue to preach. In these cases the Jewish writings served the function of providing the speaker and the audience with a common symbolical background, but the Chris- tian books were not written at first because the missionaries had either experienced the things they were talking about or had talked with somebody who had.

In less than a generation this situation changed. Letters were written to congregations and preserved as books. The Gospels chronicled the life of Christ, and the Acts of the Apostles were recorded. Eventually all that was later in the New Testament canon and many other things which were rejected from canoni- zation provided a basic collection of Christian writings. This occurred because a written record was needed of a story that was fading from memory. It happened because the church expanded throughout the empire, and a leader, such as Paul, needed to communicate with faraway believers who could not come within reach of his voice. At the same time the book and these texts were adapted for propaganda uses. Christian- ity, being an exclusive system, was trying to win men. It attacked the concept of purely local religion in which a man worshiped the same god as his father because he lived in the same town. In

common with other religious movements of a like nature, the Christians resorted to the book to retain some unity in their wide geographical dispersion. "Copies of the New Testament circulated wherever there were Christian churches. These were probably read aloud in meetings, rather than circulated to individuals for silent reading."7

Canonical writings and apocryphal books covering the same general subjects were the popular publications in the spread of Christianity. As time went on, a very bookish scholarship arose among the Church Fathers. This resulted in an extensive patristic literature, running to five hundred thousand pages in modern printed editions.8 Al- though these books varied in their possi- bilities of popular contemporary appeal, they were largely concerned with arguments of great subtlety, elaborated by specialists for specialists. In pursuit of their arguments the authors showed an acquaintance with the current pagan philosophy and with classical texts. They also did not neglect textual criticism, commentary, and translation. Such works depended on the availability of sources and textual scholars and trans- lators like Jerome and Origen were notably dependent on libraries. It was a highly developed and specialized scholarship, and it can hardly be assumed that the average Christian read much of it.

During this period the codex replaced the scroll as the format of the book. The transition from papyrus scroll to vellum codex was not immediate. The use of vellum dates back traditionally to the

7 F. G. Kenyon, Outr Bible and the Ancient Manu- scripts (New York: Harper & Bros., 1940), p. 99.

8 The Greek and Latin patristic writings edited by Jacques Paul Migne and published in Paris between 1857 and 1890 fill 382 large volumes,




library at Pergamum, where it was used in the making of scrolls. The early Chris- tians, on the other hand, retained papyrus as their writing surface but made use of the codex format.9 This is our modern form of the book, with leaves arranged in quires or gatherings. It afforded numerous advantages over the scroll. It was more compact for the copying of such long books as the Christian Bible. It could more easily be used for reference when a student wanted to consult a particular portion of a long work. Roman lawyers, with pronounced reference needs, also showed an early preference for the codex. Vellum proved later to be a more convenient material for making codexes because it was more adapt- able than papyrus to writing on both sides. By the fifth century the vellum codex was the prevalent form for both Christian and pagan writings.10

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

In the fifth century the Western Roman Empire disintegrated at last from the corruption within and the pressure without. The resultant decline in material prosperity and the severing of lines of communication greatly reduced the opportunities for bookish scholarship. The making and study of books was a nonproductive labor which did not put bread on the table, a coat on the back, or a roof over the head. Those great intellectuals, Jerome and Augustine, who still worked in the Latin tradition in the fifth century, were in this respect the last of the Romans. The West was not to see such scholars again for several hundred years.

The book found refuge in the church, the only Western agency which had

time and resources left over, beyond what was required for daily dealing with practical affairs, for the pursuit of reading and writing. The monks of St. Bene- dict were provided with time for study and contemplation and were enjoined to read books. Cassiodorus, the retired politician, amazingly vigorous for one who was fifty-nine years old, founded a monastery and a scriptorium and pro- moted scholarship for the next thirty-six years of his life. He published a manual of divine and human readings, in which he included suggestions for managing a scriptorium and rules for textual criticism.

The Divine and Human Readings of Cassiodorus takes account of one of the trials that books have always had to face. There were in that time devotees of the cult of the unfettered synapse. They feared too much book learning would in- terfere with the acquiring of natural wisdom, and they were fond of recount- ing stories of how unlearned men were able to confound everybody with their wisdom. While not denying the possi- bility of such miracles, Cassiodorus thought it best not to tempt God with a constant expectation of them. "Let us, therefore, pray," he wrote, "that those things which are closed to us be opened, and let us in no manner be cut off from the pursuit of reading.""

Cassiodorus wrote his guide to reading in order that

the unbroken line of the Divine Scriptures and the compendious knowledge of secular letters might with the Lord's beneficence be related- books not at all fluent, perhaps, since in them is found, not studied eloquence, but indispensable narration; to be sure, they are extremely useful, since through them one learns the indicated

9 Kenyon, op. cit., pp. 13-14. 10 Ibid., pp. 87-120.

11 An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings, translated with an Introduction and notes by Leslie Webber Jones (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), p. 71,




origin of both the salvation of the soul and secular knowledge. In them I commit to you, not my own learning, but the words of men of former times, which it is right to praise and glorious to proclaim for future generations.12

This statement takes on added signifi- cance when it is realized that the writer was speaking both for the building of library collections and for book production. But book-making pointed back, and new writing was, as a usual thing, a commentary on the old. It led at first to the production of epitomes of antique knowledge and later to epitomes of epitomes.13 The audience was limited to the monks, and it is a question of how many of them could read. Normally, reading was done aloud for the delectation of others than the reader of the book himself.14

As restricted as communication through books was in the early Middle Ages, it is illustrative of the paucity of all public communication. Contacts between peoples were limited. Even the wars were localized, trade was at a standstill, and the cities declined. The small estate with its subsistence economy furnished few channels of public communication. The court, the troop levy, the holiday festival, the parish church, maybe an occasional story-teller, brought people together for messages. Records of communication are sparse.

EXPANDING COMMUNICATIONS OF THE

LATE MIDDLE AGES

By the eleventh century this extreme localism showed signs of change. World trade revived, and groups of wandering merchants laid the foundations for the

trading cities and forecast the rise of the middle class, which was to broaden immeasurably the base of popular- par- ticipation in public communication.'5 Western European princes formed extensive, if not very binding, alliances and waged war together as far as Pales- tine and Byzantium. By travel, war, and trade the West came in closer contact with the intellectual heritage of the East and the vigorous creativity of the Moslem world. The increasing contact between peoples soon resulted in greater activity in all channels of communication.

Public oral communications increased, illustrated in the church through a new emphasis on preaching. The early Middle Ages had some notable preachers, but they exercised their talents in convert- ing heathen tribes. In the twelfth century the laymen in the trading cities were showing a tendency to play a role of their own in religion and could no longer be neglected. When unauthorized lay preachers began talking heresy, the orders of the preaching friars were organized to provide trained preachers to combat heresy with vernacular ser- mons.'6

A conscious and highly esteemed literary art was developing. The great troubadours and minstrels recited their tales to numerous audiences. An outcome of the rise of cities, the minstrels were organized in guilds, like other good middle-class craftsmen. The drama also, hidden for centuries and surviving in little more than the pantomimic sym- bolism of the folk dance, showed signs

12Ibid., pp. 67-68.

13 Henry Osborn Taylor, The Medieval Mind (Camiibridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), I, 219-22.

14H. J. Chaytor, From Script to Print (Cam- bridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1950), pp. 5-21,

15 Henri Pirenne, The Medieval City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948).

16 A. S. Turberville, "Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages"; and A. G. Little, "The Mendi- cant Orders," Cambridge Medieval History (Cam- bridge: At the University Press, 1929), VI, 699-726, 727-62.




of rebirth in scenes acted in church and courtyards and in tropes inserted in the Easter services.

Most appealing to the academic im- agination is the rise of the universities. The inspiration for their growth came from the renewed contacts with the East, the discovery there of old and new books, the legal code of Justinian, the medicine of Avicenna, and the philosophy of Aristotle. The content of the basic curriculum, however, consisted of the seven liberal arts which had concerned Cassiodorus in his human readings. The principal tool of instruction in the university was the lecture, and students flocked from all over western Europe to Bologna and Paris and other famous university cities to hear famous teachers expound.

Although the first local manifestations of the revival in learning and the upsurge in creative thought were oral, books figured in the movement. Twice between 1100 and 1400 the discovery of old and neglected books instigated intellectual advances of great importance. The books held by the Mos- lems and the Greeks inspired the medieval university. The discovery of neglected classical manuscripts in the fourteenth century set off the humanis- tic revival. These events are tributes to the capacity of the book to store knowledge through unresponsive ages and preserve it intact for the period when it will set new ideas in motion. But new books also appeared. The ideas of the medieval lecturers and the humanists could not be restricted to oral presentation. Students at the universities required textbooks. This resulted in the appointment of university stationers to see that they were properly supplied. The great teachers themselves recorded and explained their ideas in books,

making them available for studying over and over again and also making them known in locations where their voices could not reach. University libraries were established. Symbolic of the increased devotion to books was the action of the English Franciscans, who changed so much from their original prejudice against books that they made a union catalog of the holdings of all the Franciscan libraries in England.

The increased interest in reading was reflected in popular literature as well as in scholarly publishing. The books of Dante, Chaucer, and lesser writers en- croached upon the recitations of the minstrels and the troubadours. Religious reformers like John Wycliffe published controversial religious pamphlets. In addition to these, a number of practical books on such subjects as how to raise children, how to cook, and how to train soldiers appeared. These books enjoyed a popularity in the fifteenth century that would have been impossible in the twelfth.

The refined character of the book as a means of communication is apparent in the late medieval development. The booksupplementedotherchannels. Schol- arly books were published in university towns and were read by people who were already deeply involved in the kinds of study they represented. Books served them as a source of intellectual stimula- tion in conjunction with the other things they were doing. The important authors came from the cities where the lines of communication met, and their books provided an addition to an already great cultural awareness. Culprits prosecuted for holding heretical books were usually involved with a heretical group of people in other ways besides reading. The book added to, but did not replace, the oral channels.



(302 THE LIBRARY OUARTERLY

THE BOOK AND THE INVENTION

OF PRINTING

By 1450, western Europe was ready for the invention of printing. A market for books had developed, and an organized book trade was exploiting the popular demands for books. Materials for the invention were at hand. The techniques necessary to produce the invention had been perfected. The problem was for a clever artisan and shrewd merchant to find a way to copy books faster and cheaper. Printing with mov- able metal types was the solution of the problem.

The invention and development of printing was a business venture. The object was to gain a bigger market by producing books in quantity. The first result of the invention was therefore more of the same kinds of books. In both appearance and content the early printed books resembled in every respect the vellum and paper manuscript codexes which had preceded them. "For," as Curt Biihler has commented about these early printed books, "at all times what in the final analysis has called every edition into being was not the writer nor the printer nor the pub- lisher-it was the purchaser."'7 The purchasers that the first printers had in mind were those who had been buying manuscript books.

As a commercial venture, printing succeeded very well; by 1?00 it had spread to nearly every European country. Only a few resisted the change, and some princely collectors scorned to place a printed book in their sumptuous collections. The writers of texthand were Inot, for the most part, able to adapt themselves to the new techniques of book production. But enough goldsmiths,

mercers, and workers in the mint were free to develop the new invention when the scribes failed, and a new class of book-buyers arose to make unnecessary the dependence of the book trade on the Medici and other Renaissance princes.

While quantity book production was carrying out a commercial revolutioin in what has always been a relatively meager trade, it was contributing to a more important revolution in general communications. It gave the writer an advantage he never before possessed. With the placing of hundreds of copies of his book in circulation at once, he could in a. short time reach an audience of a size equal to that which had previously been accessible only to the public speaker but which was now much more widely dispersed. Because simultaneous distribution of editions and simultaneous reading of copies are inconceivable, the book can never become quite so immediate as the speech before an audi- eince; but the printed book was timely enough to be an important instrument of communication in contemporary issues affecting large publics. This was amply demonstrated after Luther posted his theses in 1517, when the most characteristic publications of the next century were the controversial religious tracts. Of course, the desire for an audience was not limited to the religious pamphleteers, and authors of every kind were published in the sixteenth century-Spenser and Shakespeare, for instance-but the Reformation tracts constitute the best illustration of the newly acquired timeliness of the book.

The scientific illustrated book has been pointed out as another revolution in communications engendered by the invention of printing. Once the origiinal plate or block was made, book illustrations could be reproduced in the same exact detail for hundreds of copies.

17 Fifteenth Centutry Books and the Twentieth Cent- tury (New York: Grolier Club, 1952), p. 14.




Such exactly reproduced illustrations were not characteristic of manuscript b)ooks, and Pierce Butler asserted that modern scientific sclholarship was able to (levelop because of this advantage of printing.'8 Some early printed herbals hardly bear out the observation about accuracy in illustration in scientific books, but there is no reason why the reproduction of illustrations should not share in the mechanical advantages so useful also in the reproduction of texts. The printing press resulted in a great increase in the publication of books of all sorts.

The question arises as to whether the 1ook replaced other media following the invention of printing or whether it more properly shared in the general expansion of communication. At the same time that publication increased, there were numerous indications of a rise in the literacy rate. This would suggest that more people spent more time with more books. However, there is at the same time no indication of a reduction in the oral channels of communication, and there are some notable signs of an actual increase. The scholarly lecture was still important. As influential as were the books of Erasmus and Colet on the course of humanism in Eng- land, for example, the lecturing they did at Oxford prepared the way for their books. A\s overwhelming as were the floods of Reformation religious tracts issuing from the printing presses, they were but indicative of the revival of preaching that characterized the movement. After all, the Reformation began with a challenge to oral debate, continued in learned speeches before coun- cils, and spread in an unprecedented flurry of preaching. WN hen the revival of the drama is considered in the literary

developments of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, it would appear un- likely that there was a decrease in the oral presentation of literature, despite the really notable compositions that were first published as books. The conclusion could probably be well substanti- ated that the great increase in book publishing added to, but did not replace, existing channels of communication.

THE WORLD OF PRINT

Since the beginning of printing, established knowledge has not been lost, nor has the quest for it been narrowed. The catastrophes that overtook the scholarship of Rome and Alexandria have not been repeated. Disasters there have been in plenty. Fire and flood, war and rapine, fear and prejudice, have delayed progress; but in the darkest times and the most fearful places some thread of communication and continua- tion with the world of scholarship has survived. The link with the past has not been broken. Thinkers in unafflicted areas have maintained contact with one another. The discoveries and reflections of the pioneers of knowledge have been adapted and diffused all up and down the intellectual scale. Man has even increased his knowledge by studying his tribulations.

It would be too much to attribute all this to the effect of typography. The expanded quest began before printing was invented, and the role that the book plays in the origin of ideas is a moot question. But printing was important in diffusion. It seems most likely that the original expression of new ideas comes out in an intimate group of like-minded men. From there it may go into specialized publication or lecture for a some- what broader audience, and this process of popularization continues until the whole public has been reached. Thus has

18 Pierce Butler, The Origin of Printing in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 13.




the printed book played a role in the dissemination of knowledge to con- temporaries of varying backgrounds. Its role in preserving the cultural heritage is even more obvious. No sooner does the voice of a thinker fade than his thought is lost, unless a record has been made of it. The contribution of print to the preservation of the record has been the multiplication of the copies of texts. More books have perhaps been destroyed in one bombing raid than were ever in Alexandria at any one time, but the record was .preserved in other places. Finally, by invigorating a channel of communication and providing an audience for writers, printing contributed in another way to the expansion of knowledge, because the means available to a man to express himself influence what he may say.

The reciprocal relations between expanding knowledge and print has pyra- mided books on every doorstep and in the more advanced countries has made an oddity of the man who cannot read. Books have been written on every subject for every kind of reader for the pur- pose of overcoming every kind of barrier to communication. To meet the increasing demands for books, publishers and printers have been inventive, as have men in other branches of thought. They have devised new forms-the newspaper and the magazine. They have mechanized the processes of printing. They have discovered new materials for the making of books. They have produced a flood of print that makes it impossible for a man to read all publications, both current and retro- spective, in even the narrow branches of specialized knowledge.

The multiplication of records has changed scholarship from that which prevailed in the limited book world of the ancients and of the Middle Ages.

The medieval scholar was called the "man of one book" because it was possible then to embrace universal knowledge in an epitome. This universal com- prehension had begun to fade even before the invention of printing. Dante is said to have been the last epic poet who could write with the assurance of universal understanding. After the invention of printing the epitomical notion faded quite away. Large libraries, instead of epitomes, were required to preserve the multitude of books in which accumnulated wisdom was stored.

The proliferation of publishing and the great accumulation of books have resulted in the book problem we have today. The question is not one of whether the book is useful or whether it is de- signed to last. Even with all the development of competing media of communication in the twentieth century, books and print have increased in great proportion too. This is some indication of public and scholarly esteem. The question of the future of the book is not so much one of its usefulness as it is one of getting at its contents. Even before 1500 Johan Tritheim sought to establish some control over the increasing numbers of books by producing a systematic bibliography. In the en- suing four and a half centuries, noble efforts have been bestowed on bibliog- raphies, library cataloging and classification, indexes, abstracting services, and other devices, in an attempt to bring the information stored in books under. efficient control. The efforts have not been completely successful, but they con- tinue. The future of the book is tied to these efforts to make the book more useful.

CONCLUSION

This short survey of the history of the book has revealed some points that may



I'HE ROLE OF THE BOOK IN SOCIETY 305

have a bearing on its future. First, the book originated and survived as a functional tool of communication. As such it has been useful in overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of communication between people. This is the inherent capacity of the book, to communicate. However, it is not a capacity exclusive with the book, because the barriers may be cleared by other means. Consequently, the status of the book in respect to other devices of communication varies with the culture in which communication takes place. Its status has been highest where knowledge was mature and specialization developed. The maturity of knowledge puts an emphasis on records which can bridge the gap of time, and the book in the past has been the most efficient record. To the degree that specialization flour- ishes, the common understanding of a purely local assembly is reduced. On the one hand, this has made the book valuable for communication between scholars widely separated by space. On the other, it has provided for the specialist-in-training a text for intensive study and reflection.

Second, the use given the book has been reflected in its changing forms. When the papyrus scrolls were used to carry around on journeys and to read on shipboard, the scrolls became smaller and more compact than their ceremonial predecessors. When the reference use of the book became important, the vellum codex replaced the papyrus scroll. When knowledge burgeoned and the demand for books from more people increased, printing on paper replaced the manuscript on vellum. Without losing the characteristic of being a portable graphic record of language, the book has from time to time undergone the most radical

changes in format and method of issue in order to meet varying communications needs.

Of all the functions which the book has fulfilled that of communicating between generations is the one in which it has enjoyed the greatest advantage over all other devices. Once a book has been made, the permanence of the record is contingent only on the ability of its materials to withstand the physical ravages of time and human neglect. All uses of the book are derived from this primary characteristic of permanence. The message indited can be sent abroad, and it will not fade in the time required for trans- it. The difficult message remains perma- nently recorded, so the student can look at it again. In providing for the storage of information and for its efficient re- trieval, the codex book has been without peer. It can hold more and yield it more readily than any other tool that has been devised up to now. It was to perform this function -the reference use of the book -that the codex was invented. For the scholarship based on one book the epitome, it was ideal. It is a question, however, whether it meets the needs of modern scholarship, with the demands on so many books, as well.

When it becomes necessary to search thousands of books instead of one, there is some reason to suspect the communications situation has changed again. This may affect the role and status of the book in the future, as it has in the past. Essentially, this means not that the value of the book has decreased but that our methods for getting at the contents of books have been unable to keep up with book publication. Any new devices, therefore, might be those which would facilitate our reaching the content rather than those which would replace the book.



historical perspectives on the role of the book in society

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