It was possible for Aristotle, starting from the premise that a man, being actually cultured, may also become literate, to ask whether there is a necessary or merely an accidental connection of literacy with culture. Such a question can hardly arise for those to whom illiteracy implies, as a matter of course, ignorance, backwardness, unfitness for self-government: for you, unlettered people are uncivilized peoples and vice versa—as a recent publisher’s blurb expresses it: “The greatest force in civilization is the collective wisdom of a literate people."