416 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BOOKS. 



Oi\ THE CLASSIFICATION OF BOOKS. 



BY J. P. LESLEY 



LIBRARIAN OF THE AMERICAN PIIU.OSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



Libraries are of two Idnds, general and special. The one now catalogued* is 

 of the most general description, and affords an oppoi-tunity for some thorouglily 

 pliilosopliical arrangement, based upon an analysis of human knowledge which 

 will leave nothing disregarded. However imperfectly the attempt to accomplish 

 the object may succeed in this or other instances, failure will only stimulate to 

 renewed endeavor. A reasonable arrangement of every collection in the hands 

 of man is a call of the soul, to be obeyed. A merely empirical adjustment of 

 minerals to the drawers which contain them, or of books to the siielves on which 

 they stand, fortuitously numbered as they are obtained, and indexed alphabeti- 

 cally for the convenience of servants, justly embarrasses, depresses, and disgusts 

 the thinker. 



Two arrangements of a catalogue, systematic or raisonnde, present themselves 

 at once for selection : the analytic and the synthetic. The synthetic corresponds 

 with the teachings of nature and art, by the experience of which we are in- 

 structed in items to the knowledge of the whole. The analytic corresponds 

 with the method of the schools, and of their reliquiae, books ; which state prin- 

 ciples, and then describe their applications; announce laAvs, and then show their 

 utility; first furnish knowledge in its most advanced or abstract condition, and 

 aftervv^ards embody it in illustrations. Face to face with nature, the form of 

 man receives its noblest inspiral iarii but by libraries of books the spirit of man 

 obtains its largest information. 



The book of nature and the book of the library being thus opposed, the one 

 is not consulted in' the same manner as the other. The book of nature begins 

 with its iUustrations, follows wiih descriptive text, sketches out indistinctly a 

 few broad statements, suggests, a summary, and omits the index altogether. 

 The book of the library, on the contrary, carefully places its table of contents 

 in the front, makes of its pref see' an epitome, and of its body an argument, 

 leaving notes and pictures to be consulted, at the pleasure of the reader, at the 

 close. In tliese antagonistic gymnasia two antagonistic tribes are bred, mere 

 scholars and mere naturalists, characterized by opposite tendencies : by the loose- 

 ness with which the former state facts, and the pertinacity with Avhich they 

 maintain doctrines ; by the scrupulous narrowness witli which the latter examine 

 things, and the facility with which they adopt new theories. To be a mere 

 scholar is to run the risk of becoming inaccurate in flicts and dogmatic in 

 judgment. To be a mere naturalist is to become materialistic and unimaginative, 

 narrow-minded and pedantic. 



The true philosopher resides alternately in nature and in the library. Writing 

 in the first and reading in the second, he weaves shuttle-like the stuff of thought 

 out of which he and his fellows array themselves in goodness, truth, and beauty. 

 But of these two homes, the philosopher has two very diiferent stories to tell; 

 he regards them with very different sentiments. The one is ancestral — he was 

 born into it and belongs to it; the other he makes proper to his hand. The 

 philosopher must accept his rural residence as it grows, enclosing him with 



^ Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 



