... our time—where search for those "few immortal names that were not born to die"? Oral transmission of historic data, such as prevails among savages, such as prevailed among the Hellenes in the age of Homer, has been supplanted by the press. Long before Macaulay's New Zealander stands on a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, every book now extant will have perished. Will they be continuously reproduced, and thus, like the human race itself, run ever on? Quien sabey? Eras of barbarism ... — Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
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