IF PUBLIC LIBRARIES, WHY NOT PUBLIC MUSEUMSl 773 



thousand iu population may, by a two-tbirds majority, adopt the Pub- 

 lic Libraries Act, and a sum not exceeding a penny in a pound may be 

 levied for carrying out the provisions of the act. 



Thomas Greenwood, the author of a special work on museums and 

 art galleries, expresses his belief that ''the museum of the future must 

 stand side by side with the library and the laboratory, as a part of the 

 teaching equipment of the college and the university, and in the great 

 cities cooperate with the public library as one of the principal agencies 

 for the enlightenment of the people." 



Prof. Goode, the officer in charge of the U. S. National Museum, says: 



I am confident, also, that a museum, wisely organized and properly arranged, is 

 certain to beuetit the library near which it stands in many ways through its 

 power to stimulate interest iu books, thus increasing the general popularity of the 

 library and enlarging its endowment. 



England discovered that art schools were not sufficient to i^lace her 

 art manufactures on a level with those of her continental competitors, 

 and was forced to supplement her schools with museums of art handi- 

 work, and the large endowment granted the South Kensington Museum 

 was fully justified by the results shown in the great exhibition of 1867. 

 A museum seems as much an integral part of the public library as are 

 the experiments part of a lecture on chemistry or physics. If the 

 public library is established primarily for educational purposes, surely 

 the public museum should come in the same category. The potency 

 of an object in conveying information beyond all pages of description 

 is seen in the fact that in the museum a simple label associated with a 

 veritable object is often sufficient to tell the story at a glance; the eye 

 seizes the essentials at once. 



The rapid development of the modern arts of illustration, and the 

 conspicuous use of these methods in books, magazines, dictionaries, 

 and even the daily papers, attest the power of the pictorial art, bar- 

 barous as it is in many cases, in imparting information (quickly and 

 clearly. If illustrations are so imj)ortant in the modern publication — 

 and to do without them would seem well-nigh impossible — how far 

 more important it would seem to be to provide an exhibition of the 

 objects themselves in science, art, and history, to which the public 

 might have free access. 



A museum adds dignity to a trifle. What seems a worthless object 

 to the minds of the multitude becomes at once endowed with interest 

 when carefully framed or mounted, and clearly labeled. Furthermore, 

 the object is seen to have a definite relation to other equally common 

 objects with which it is associated; a lesson is learned, and sooner or 

 later the observer finds an added interest in his studies, if indeed he is 

 not aware for the first time of regions of thought utterly unknown to 

 him before. The charm that attends the demonstration of the minor 

 factors of natural selection comes from the love of causality, a desire 

 which, as Peschel truly says, accounts for the intellectual supremacy 

 of Europe over the great Asiatic nations lying east of her. 



