212 THE LIBRARY 



hemmed in by exclusive boundaries of nation or race. The arrogant 

 Western world owes its most cherished book, the Bible, a volume of 

 many books in one, to the East, to the patriarchs and prophets of a 

 race that lives only in exile from its fatherland a race that, wher- 

 ever it may be, powerful or oppressed, wealthy or mendicant, turns 

 in prayer to the Holy City that is the symbol of its faith and hope. 



It used to be said that an educated man was one who knew some- 

 thing of everything and everything of something. With the ever- 

 widening field of knowledge and observation it is impossible that a 

 man should know even something of everything, and even the most 

 devoted specialist, however minute his specialty may be, finds a diffi- 

 culty in learning all that can be known of his subject. Thus arise 

 opposite dangers of superficiality and narrowness. The library, 

 whilst it should aid the researches of the specialist, should also help 

 him to take broad views and to see even his own special work in its 

 right proportion and true relation to other studies. To see things, 

 not in sections but as a whole, is not the easiest duty of the student, 

 but it is real and essential. A great library impresses this thought on 

 the mind. Are you an astronomer? Has it been yours to feel the 

 awe and wonder when "a new planet swims into the ken"? Your 

 science may have begun when Eve, on the night of the expulsion, 

 saw shining above the lost Paradise a star of hope. Thousands of 

 men have devoted their lives to your study since the days, thousands 

 of years ago, of the shepherd star-gazers on the Babylonian plains. 

 It has a rich and extensive literature, but in the greatest library its 

 hall is but one of many. Mr. Dewey allows it ten places out of 

 a thousand in his Decimal Classification. So it is with every other 

 department of learning. I do not know of a more remarkable 

 bibliography than that contained in Dr. J. S. Billings's Catalogue 

 of the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington. Sixteen volumes of 

 a first series, eight of a second series, and more to follow, all filled 

 with titles of books and papers written on the healing art. Looking 

 on this great effort, we are as ready as Socrates to pay tribute to 

 Esculapius. Yet medicine, like astronomy, is but one of the 

 many departments of a great library. Universality is, as we have 

 seen, an ideal impossible of realization. Not the less is complete- 

 ness the watchword for every library - - a rational effort to provide 

 the best that is possible under the environing circumstances. Every 

 library, however small, may aim at completeness in some direction 

 and every true microcosm is a contribution to the macrocosm. And 

 the ideas of universality and completeness become nearer of fulfill- 

 ment by that spirit of cooperation which is happily becoming more 

 and more common amongst librarians and amongst the large and 

 increasing class of persons who are engaged, to use the fine Smith- 

 sonian phrase, in " the increase and diffusion of knowledge among 



