Now we cannot break away from that law of development with which our individual existence is involved, and which necessarily (as far as any will of ours is concerned) is a most important, nay, the most important, element in that tertium quid which man becomes in virtue of the threefold elements which constitute him:—­1st, a given internal constitution of mind; 2d. the modifying effects of the actual exercise of his faculties and their interaction with one another, resulting in habits; and, 3d, that external world of influences which supplies the materiel from which this strange plant extracts its aliment, and ultimately derives its fair fruits or its poisonous berries.  All this is inevitable, upon the supposition that man was to be a social, not a solitary being,—­linked by an indissoluble chain to those who came before and to those who come after him,—­dependent, absolutely dependent, upon others for his being, his training, his whole condition, civil, social, intellectual, moral, and religious.  If, then, an external instrument of moral and religious culture were Given by God to man, would it not be in strict analogy with this tremendous and mysterious law of human development?

IV.  I must be permitted to proceed yet one step further, and affirm that the very form in which this presumed revelation has (as we say) been given—­that of a Book—­is also in strict analogy with the law by which God himself has made this an indispensable instrument of all human progress.  We have just seen that man is what he is, as much (to say the least) by the influence of external influence as by the influence of the internal principles of his constitution; it must be added, that to make that external influence of much efficiency at all, still more to render it either universally or progressively beneficial, the world waits for a—­book.  Among the varied external influences amidst which the human race is developed, this is incomparably the most important, and the only one that is absolutely essential.  Upon it the collective education of the race depends.  It is the sole instrument of registering, perpetuating, transmitting thought.

Yes, whatever trivial and vulgar associations may impair our due conceptions of this grandeur of this material and artificial organon of man’s development, as compared with the intellectual and moral energies, which have recourse to it, but which are almost impotent without it.  God has made man’s whole career of triumphs dependent upon this same art of writing!  The whole progress of the world he has created, he has made dependent upon the Alphabet!  Without this the progress of the individual is inconceivably slow, and with him, for the most part, progress terminates.  By this alone can we garner the fruits of experience,—­become wise by the wisdom of others, and strong by their strength.  Without this man everywhere remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose it when he has once gained it, would, after