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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: IGNORANCE, though not in the same category as fire and water,
is a great destroyer of books. At the Reformation so strong was
the antagonism of the people generally to anything like the old
idolatry of the Romish Church, that they destroyed by thousands books,
secular as well as sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters.
Unable to read, they saw no difference between romance and a psalter,
between King Arthur and King David; and so the paper books with all
their artistic ornaments went to the bakers to heat their ovens,
and the parchment manuscripts, however beautifully illuminated,
to the binders and boot makers.
There is another kind of ignorance which has often worked destruction,
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