THE LIBRARY 199 



" Again, more than ninety-five children out of every hundred 

 leave school before they are sufficiently mature to comprehend those 

 studies which open their eyes to the universe, which bear upon their 

 relations to their fellow men, upon their duties as citizens of a state, 

 as members of organized society. These are the studies that deal 

 with the most important problems that mankind has to solve. They 

 cannot be taught to children; they cannot be taught, dogmatically, 

 at all. They involve the consideration of burning questions, 

 subjects of bitter controversy - - the world-old battle between con- 

 servatism and innovation, which, as Emerson says, ' is the subject 

 of civil history.' They cannot be taught by any teacher; they 

 cannot be taught by any text-book or by any one book. Their ade- 

 quate consideration calls for the reading of many books - - books 

 of the present and the future as well as of the past. The electrician 

 who allowed himself to be guided by the treatises of twenty years ago 

 would have no standing; neither has the economist or sociologist 

 who has not kept up with the literature of the last thirty years or the 

 last three years. It would be of no particular advantage for all of 

 us to be electricians. We can safely trust that field to experts; 

 but it is extremely desirable that every man should comprehend the 

 great issues of economics and politics. The school cannot even present 

 the important problems of sociology; the university cannot ade- 

 quately do so without the library. On no other subject is the wide 

 reading that Matthew Arnold enjoins so necessary. And no other 

 subject is of such momentous importance to mankind; for the 

 betterment of social conditions is a necessary forerunner and foun- 

 dation of moral and religious progress. And that cannot be true 

 religion which does not lead to social betterment. In that noblest 

 aspiration ever put into the mouth and mind and heart (too often, 

 alas, only the mouth!) of man we are taught to pray not that we 

 may be transplanted to a better world, but that God's kingdom may 

 come and his will be done in this world. 



" We are not likely to abate our eagerness in the pursuit of know- 

 ledge of physical science, for the zeal of the scientist is stimulated 

 by the spur of commercialism; and, though it seems impossible, the 

 twentieth century may bring forth as wonderful discoveries and 

 inventions as the nineteenth. But, to take the advance just now 

 most sought, can any one raise the question as to which would be of 

 greater benefit to St. Louis, to reach Chicago in an hour by air-ship 

 or to take six or ten hours for the trip and find there and every- 

 where - - a contented body of workmen supplying us with the 

 necessities of life and a set of managers carrying on the transporta- 

 tion system that we already have on equal terms to all people? 

 What the world's progress most needs is ' evening up.' The ad- 

 vancing column presents a very ragged front, with physical science 



