The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages, incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas entrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers: the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the later, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but very little his fellow-laborer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same or even a greater difference will be found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely pronounce that without some species of writing no people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.

From Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London: Wordsworth, 1998 (first published from 1776 to 1788), p. 185.

Addendum (May 13, 2011)

This passage so thrilled me as soon as I stumbled upon it that there was no question about plucking it and preserving it for easy reference in the future. The thrill comes from my own use of writing, of course. A consummate man of learning, I do my best to prevent my memory from dissipating or corrupting the ideas entrusted to her charge. My personal history is preserved in my Residua primarily for my own use. But I am also thrilled by the illiterate peasant in this wonderful passage. And that includes almost everyone I personally know. In fact, almost everyone now alive. Few people I know are acquainted with the use of letters to preserve their personal histories. Diaries or journals are not popular any longer. Memoirs still are, but they are usually written after retirement, and only by people in the public eye. The habit of writing for oneself, introduced several centuries ago, has practically vanished already. Even when literate, most people who surround me are illiterate in this sense. The illiterate peasants, in Gibbon’s felicitous phrase and his own enthusiastic emphasis.