A Librarian's Open Shelf by E Arthur Bostwick

Author:E Arthur Bostwick [Bostwick, E Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: user study, Library Science, Essays
ISBN: 9781435343139
Google: 49ccIAAACAAJ
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
Published: 2007-08-31T18:30:00+00:00

What The Flag Stands For9

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The most important things in the world are ideas. We are so familiar with the things that are the material embodiment of ideas—buildings, roads, vehicles and machines—that we are prone to forget that without the ideas that gave them birth all these would be impossible. A house is a mass of wood, stone and metal, but all these substances, collected in a pile, do not suffice to make a house.

A locomotive is made of steel and brass, but although the ancient Romans had both the metal and the alloy, they had no locomotives.

The vital thing about the house—the thing that differentiates it from other masses of the same materials—is the idea—the plan—that was in the architect’s mind while wood and stone and iron were still in forest, quarry and mine. The vital thing about the locomotive is the builder’s idea or plan, which he derived, in turn, from the inventor.

The reason why there were no locomotives in ancient Rome is that in those days the locomotive had not yet been invented, and when we say this we refer not to the materials, which the Romans had in abundance, but to the idea or plan of the locomotive. So it is with the whole material world about us. The things that result, not from man’s activities, but from the operations of nature, are no exceptions; for, if we are Christians, we believe that the idea or plan of a man, or a horse, or a tree, was in the mind of the great architect, the great machinist, before the world began, and that this idea is the important thing about each.

A man, a house, an engine—these are ideas that lead to things that we can feel, and see and hear. But there are other ideas that have nothing of the kind to correspond to them—I mean such ideas as charity, manliness, religion and patriotism—what sometimes are called abstract qualities. These are real things and their ideas are even more important than the others, but we cannot see nor feel them.

Now, man likes to use his senses, and it is for this reason that he is fond of using for these abstract ideas, symbols that he can see and feel. We of St. Louis should appreciate this to the full just now, for we have just set before the world the greatest assemblage of symbolic images and acts, portraying our pride in the past and our hope and confidence for the future, that any city on this earth ever has been privileged to present or to witness.10 Whether we were actors or spectators; whether we camped with the Indians, marched with De Soto or La Salle and felled the forests of early St. Louis with Laclede and Chouteau, or whether we were part of that great host on the hillside, we can say no longer that we do not understand the importance of the idea, or the value and cogency of the visible symbols that fix it in the memory and grip it to the heart.

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