They are brothers, partners,
consorts, who can work together, as right hand and left hand, as science
and art, as theory and practice. Rede-craft may call for books and
hand-craft for tools, but it is by the help of both books and tools that
mankind moves on. Indeed, we shall not err wide of the mark if we say
that a book is a tool, for it is the instrument which we make use of in
certain cases when we wish to find out what other men have thought and
done. Perhaps you will not be as ready to admit that a tool is a book.
But take for example the plow. Compare the form in use to-day on a
first-rate farm with that which is pictured on ancient stones long hid
in Egypt--ages old. See how the idea of the plow has grown, and bear in
mind that its graceful curves, it fitness for a special soil, or for
a special crop, its labor-saving shape, came not by chance, but by
thought. Indeed, a plow is made up from the thoughts and toils of
generations of plowmen. Look at a Collins ax; it is also the record
of man's thought. Lay it side by side with the hatchet of Uncas or
Miantonomoh, or with an ax of the age of bronze, and think how many
minds have worked on the head and on the helve, how much skill has been
spent in getting the metal, in making it hard, in shaping the edge, in
fixing the weight, in forming the handle.
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