THE LIBRARY IN RELATION TO KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 



BY WILLIAM EDWARD ABMYTAGE AXON 



[William Edward Armytage Axon, Member of the Literary Staff of the Man- 

 chester Guardian, Manchester, England, from 1874 until his retirement in 1905. 

 b. Manchester, England, January, 1846. Self-educated. LL.D. Wilber- 

 force, 1899. Deputy Chief Librarian, Manchester Public Libraries, 1874; 

 one of the founders of the Library Association of the United Kingdom; Bibli- 

 ographical Society; and Past President of Lancashire and Cheshire Antiqua- 

 rian Society; Chairman of the Salford Museum and Libraries Committee. 

 Author of many books and articles on the library, and also editor of several 

 journals.] 



IF the most accomplished and most enthusiastic librarian in the 

 world were possessed of Aladdin's power and summoned the Spirit 

 of the Lamp, not to build a gorgeous palace for his beloved princess, 

 but to erect an ideal library for the benefit of the world, what would 

 it be likely to contain? 



The dream library, standing in its fair pleasance, a structure 

 beautiful and spacious, of ample proportions and conveniently ar- 

 ranged both for study and recreation, what would the Magician 

 Librarian desire to place upon its myriad shelves? The library is 

 an instrument of culture, of research, of moralization, and, as the 

 record of human effort and aspiration, touches learning and life at 

 every point. The ideal library would form a complete narrative 

 of the past history of mankind, a record of all that men have found 

 out or surmised about the physical facts of the universe, from the 

 giant worlds that roll in space to the tiniest insect that can be 

 detected by the strongest microscope; all that men have thought 

 about that which has not material form; all that poet and sage, 

 teacher and prophet, have said about ethics; all that men have 

 invented and devised for the arts and pleasures of life; in short, all 

 the documentary evidences of human activity since the advent of 

 man upon the globe. Such a library never has existed and never can 

 exist, but it is the ideal archetype to which all libraries, consciously or 

 unconsciously, seek to approximate. Even in Utopia such a mass of 

 literature, good, bad, or indifferent, would be impossible, for it would 

 embrace all that human wisdom and human folly has ever intrusted 

 to the recording word. Physical and financial considerations impose 

 upon all existing libraries the necessity of selection, but the ideal 

 library would be all-embracing and include all the literature of every 

 land and of every science. Would the ideal library include " trash " ? 

 Must everything be preserved? Such inquiries are natural enough in 

 an age when the printing-press vomits forth by day and night much 

 that the sober-minded could easily spare. But everything that 

 comes from the human brain is an evidence of what the mind of man 



