226 THE LIBRARY 



have these collections at their own house instead of wandering 

 from one library to another to collect them at the expense of their 

 eyes, their patience, and their money. To be able to compare the 

 various texts and to have the various readings of them under one's 

 eye is an inestimable benefit; but the true philologist will never be 

 contented with simply studying these facsimiles, however perfect 

 they may be ; he will want to examine for himself the ancient 

 parchments, the time-yellowed papers, to study the slight differences 

 between the inks, the varieties in the handwritings, the evanescent 

 glosses in the margins. In the same way an art critic is not content 

 with confining his study simply to the photographs of pictures, but 

 he observes the pictures themselves, their patina, their coloring, 

 their shadows, their least graduations of tones and half-tones. In 

 the same way, too, a musician would not presume to the knowledge 

 of an opera which he had only studied in a pianoforte arrangement. 

 If this manner of shunning fatigue took root, our splendid collections 

 of manuscripts would no longer be the goal of learned pilgrims, but 

 would become the easy prey of the photographer, who would cer- 

 tainly embark upon a new speculation that of retailing these collec- 

 tions to the manifest injury of the libraries and of the states, which 

 would thus lose the exclusive literary and artistic possession of what 

 is a national glory. Meanwhile a wise jurisdiction will avoid these 

 dangers without injuring or hindering studies and culture. We shall 

 adopt for manuscripts, which excite other people's desires, the pro- 

 position made by Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazuse (that charming 

 satire on socialism) to bridle the excesses of free love. We shall 

 permit a man to have a copy of a manuscript when he has first had 

 one of another and older manuscript and when the latter, which is 

 about equal in value to the first, has already been given up to the 

 library, which will thus lose none of its property. " I give to make 

 you give/' Do ut des, - - base and foundation of international treat- 

 ises for customs duties must be applied also in a reasonable manner to 

 the intellectual traffic that will be the characteristic of future civiliza- 

 tion, which will never permit one nation to grow poor while another 

 grows rich, and will insist that wealth be the bearer of equality and 

 fruitful in good. A well-regulated metabolism, as it insures the health 

 of our organic bodies,will also serve to maintain the health of that great 

 social body which we all desire and foresee, notwithstanding political 

 struggles and the wars which still stain the earth with blood. When 

 the time comes in which we shall be able to use for ideal aims the 

 millions which are now swallowed up by engines of war, of ruin, and of 

 assault, the library will be looked upon as the temple of wisdom, and 

 to it will be turned far more than at present the unceasing care of 

 governments and of peoples. When that time comes, the book will be 

 able to say to the cannon, with more truth than Quasimodo to Notre 



