196 THE LIBRARY 



the future life is ever solved this side of the grave, the knowledge 

 conserved and disseminated by the library will be the starting-point 

 and the inspiration of the advance, as it has been of all progress since 

 the art of written speech was invented. ' The library is the reser- 

 voir of the common social life of the race. It is at once the accumu- 

 lator and the transmitter of social energy.' Without the library 

 the highest social culture is impossible; and a most moderate degree 

 could be achieved by very few. 



" Under the main division, ' Social Culture/ the Library is one 

 of the five sections in the Department of Education. In education 

 are summed up all the achievements of the past and the possibilities 

 of the future. In the words of Wendell Phillips: 'Education is the 

 one thing worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful 

 man.' ' Education,' exclaims Mazzini, ' and my whole doctrine is 

 included and summed up in this grand word.' It is practically a 

 truism that Jules Simon utters when he says, ' Le peuple qui a les 

 meilleures ecoles est le premier peuple; s'il ne Vest pas aujourd'hui il 

 le sera demain.' 



" Under this Department of Education, with its grades, the 

 School, the College, and the University, the Library is assigned the 

 last section. It belongs there in chronological order of development 

 as an active factor in popular instruction and enlightenment; and 

 furthermore, the presentation of its claims and functions comes 

 naturally after those of the other factors in education, because it 

 is an essential coadjutor and supplement to each and all. It is a 

 summary and a climax. There have always been libraries, and they 

 have always been a factor in education; but the public, free, tax- 

 supported library is but just a half-century old, and could hardly be 

 considered out of the long clothes of infancy till the year 1876, while 

 its general acceptance as an essential supplement to the public 

 school and a coordinate factor with the college and university may 

 be considered the accomplishment of the last decade. This ac- 

 ceptance, however, is not yet universal. There are still teachers 

 who look on general reading as an interference with school work and 

 an extra burden on their shoulders. 



" We start, then, with the axiomatic proposition that all human 

 progress depends on education; and no elaborate demonstration 

 is necessary to show that the library is an essential factor in every 

 grade of education. 



" Higher education, certainly, cannot dispense with the library. 

 The well-known dictum of Carlyle ' The true university of modern 

 times is a collection of books '-was accepted as a striking statement 

 of a man with the rhetorical habit, without, perhaps, a realization of 

 its full significance. It has been recently expanded into a more 

 express and specific tribute to the importance of the library in 



