THE LIBRARY AND KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 205 



that successive scientific investigators have taught us of his bodily 

 structure and of the complicated processes by which the mystery of 

 life is sustained; all that has been ascertained of the changes that 

 follow when the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl is broken 

 and the dust returns to the earth as it was. There we should be able 

 to read the history of the races of men since the first dawn of human 

 life upon the globe; the struggle of man in his efforts for the conquest 

 of nature; the horror and the heroism, the mixture of grandeur and 

 grotesque in the crimes of conquerors, in the struggles of the enslaved; 

 the rise and fall of empires; the transformation of savage tribes into 

 civilized nations. And the library must record the painful evidence 

 of degeneration from higher to lower types not less than those docu- 

 ments which convince us that 



. . . Thro' the ages, one increasing purpose runs, 

 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. 



If it is the function of the library to preserve the records of man 

 acting in the corporate capacity of clan or nation, not less so is it to 

 keep account of those members of the race who, by the force of their 

 individuality, stand out, whether for praise or reproach, from the 

 common mass. Apart from its fascination as a picture of human 

 life and character, biography has a practical value both as warning 

 and incentive in the conduct of life. The library should conserve for 

 us all that the thinkers have formulated as to the conduct of life, 

 the rules for the guidance of the individual in his duties to himself, 

 in his relations to his fellows, in the contact of man with man, in the 

 laws and tendencies to be seen in his industries and commerce, in 

 the relation of nation to nation, of race to race, of class to class. Nor 

 is it of less interest to us to know the marvels of industry, the won- 

 drous processes by which the properties and forces of the earth and 

 of the universe are utilized for the service of man. The relation of 

 man to nature, the secrets of bird and beast, of flower and tree, of all 

 the myriad creatures, past and present, that make up the sum of 

 the life of our Avorld, these are to be noted in our ideal library. There, 

 too, we must look for the record of all that can be ascertained and 

 surmised of the countless worlds, moving in empyreal space, worlds 

 beyond the sight of man, yet known though unseen. The library is 

 the temple of art as well as of science, and in its open volumes we 

 may gaze upon the glowing visions seen by Phidias, by Raphael, by 

 Michelangelo, by all those who in many lands and climes have in- 

 terpreted to their fellows the strength and harmony of nature and 

 the beauty of the human form. The power of the artist is immensely 

 increased by the possibility of reproduction and by the popularization 

 of art in the library. That such reproductions can never convey all 

 the beauty of the originals may be quite true, but whatever may 



