Searching Sojourner Truth for books that contained book traces was actually quite an interesting experience. I searched through the philosophy section, and although I couldn’t find the book I was looking for, I did find a little something.

While these underlines and symbols don’t mean all that much to me, it’s fascinating to see what people from who-knows-what-year found significant. I’m only left to guess what they were looking for or what they needed this information for, I could only imagine that they were studying for a test or marking down information that they would need later for a paper. The Nature Of Goodness, by George Herbert Palmer seems like something my philosophy teacher now would have me read, and I just find it so interesting that something that was written in 1903 could still be useful today. It makes me wonder: Was this student’s curriculum similar to mine? Was she/he as confused by all of these thoughts as I am?

I also loved to see how well this book withstood the test of time, it was actually in very good condition. There was minimal damage to the spine, and the pages were almost perfect. Maybe that just says that few people have made use of this book, but the person who made those markings and myself clearly found what we were looking for, so maybe that was this book’s true purpose. The author wrote the book to enlighten people on his view of goodness, yet I got something completely unrelated out of it. Books serve many purposes, even ones they are unintended for.