We modern humans read all sorts of things and for all sorts of reasons. Reading newspapers helps keep us informed about what’s happening in the wider world. We read letters, or once did, from those still dear, but no longer near. Lovers separated by oceans and continents once routinely bared their hearts to one another in passionately composed letters, recieved and read with great delight. As humankind’s ability to travel the world increased, reading took on ever greater importance as a means of cementing and maintaining bonds of family and friendship.

如今，文字本身可以以光速传播。因此，我们不再通过在Facebook、Twitter上即时收到的帖子、电子邮件和短信，来与远方的朋友和家人，甚至是完全陌生的人保持联系，而不是用羊皮纸或纸张写那些拖延已久但又热切期待的信件。这些短暂的阅读在我们的生活中有它们的位置。但它们无法取代更激烈、更具挑战性的阅读形式。阅读大量的哲学著作、历史著作、密集的科学期刊或严谨的数学证明需要认真的投入，但这些投入的回报是增强智力。同样，阅读高要求的诗歌或文学小说可以扩展我们的情感，丰富我们的想象力。

Reading is essential for a well-lived human life. Indeed, it is one of the central pillars on which our capacity for autonomous self-governance rests. In the antebellum South, especially after Nat Turner’s rebellion, it was a crime to teach slaves to read. The slave owners reasoned that a slave that could read was a dangerous slave, while a slave that was kept illiterate was a slave easier to control and manipulate. While I suspect that slaveholders vastly underestimated the unquenchable nature of the thirst for freedom, even among the illiterate, they were no doubt right to believe that reading can give added direction and intensity to that thirst.

Sadly, illiteracy is still with us. In America, according to a 2013 survey, nearly 32 million adults cannot read. That’s an astounding 14% of America’s adult population. Moreover, 21% of American adults read at below a 5th grade level. Worldwide, there are one billion non-literate adults. That’s roughly 26% of the world’s adult population. Not surprisingly, they are mostly clustered in the developing world. Though we think a lot about overcoming global poverty as a barrier to global justice, we don’t think nearly enough about overcoming global illiteracy as a key to global justice.

Thanks to rise of modern means of communication, reading is in serious decline. Who has time for dense and hard to digest books, when easily consumable and more immediately entertaining audio and visual information streams at you on demand, 24/7 from every screen in your possession? Now I fully acknowledge the awesome power of both sound and image. Each can do things to our minds that the printed word will never match. So let a thousand flowers bloom! We are blessed to live at a time when there are so many ways to tell a story, package a message, or depict the world. We should eagerly embrace them all. It would be a sad day indeed, however, if the ready availability of sound and image were ever to drive the printed word into extinction.

The act of reading exercises the mind in ways in which neither sound nor image can hope to match. A well written book invites you to savor each word. Where a film takes over your imagination and relieves you of the hard work, a book offers mere hints and directions, and demands that you do the work of following through on the hints and direction for yourself. This labor of the imagination can sometimes be intense. But such intense labor has great rewards. An athlete in training who pushes herself to the limit in practice, reaps the rewards of her labors when the game is on. So too, does a reader. The mental muscles we strengthen when reading will serve us well when the game of life is really on.

当我们说话时，我们尽量直截了当，使我们的意思明白易懂，明确无误。这很大程度上是因为说话的词上一秒还在，下一秒就消失了。而且没有记录设备，我们不能让它按命令返回重新检查。但是，因为书面文字经久不衰，因为我们可以一读再读，所以作家可以自由地将一层又一层的意思融入到哪怕是一个句子中。

Now unpacking dense layers of meaning takes a certain skill. But it is a skill that can be taught and learned. Mastering this skill is very much worth the time and effort. After all, the world itself is a text densely packed with layers of meaning. And mastering the ancient art of reading the written word can help us to master the even more difficult art of reading the text that is the world.