Excerpt from The Book Above Every Book: A Popular Illustrated Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1909-1910 When we compare and contrast the precious things which have been produced by human toil and thought and skill, none of them appears more wonderful than a book. For books are an abstract and epitome of man's development. To explore their origin we must go back to primeval generations in the morning of the world, before history began. There could be no books before the art of writing; writing again is only a symbol for speech. How did men first learn to express their thoughts in spoken words? How did articulate sounds become crystal lized into written characters He who has the key to these mysterious secrets will find little left to marvel at in mechanical contrivances like paper and printing. To say this, however, is not to deny that the mere body of a book possesses high importance and interest. SO far as form and material are concerned, it seems that books once claimed kinship with trees. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.