228 THE LIBRARY 



treasures of information, of learning, of bibliographical exactitude, 

 which are contained in those dusty volumes. Above all, the precision 

 of the references, and of the quotations, the comprehensiveness of 

 the subjects and of the headings, render them, rather than a pre- 

 cious catalogue, an enormous encyclopedia, to which we may have 

 recourse not only for history, for geography, for literature, for all 

 moral sciences, but also, impossible as it may seem, for natural 

 sciences, for medicine, and for the exact sciences. Incredible is the 

 number of quotations made for even the least important subject; 

 incredible, too, is our ignorance, our stupid disdain for this emporium 

 for out-of-the-way information. Were you to study the article 

 " Fever," you might perhaps find a hint at its propagation by means 

 of mosquitoes, just as I, studying the geography of Ethiopia, came 

 across mention of those gold-mines which have just lately been found 

 again in Erythrea. Modern science, less presumptuous than that 

 of a short while ago, which had shut itself up in the dogmas of 

 materialism, will not disdain to visit these springs, and to compile 

 an encyclopedia of the knowledge of the ancients, with quotations 

 drawn from these true wells of science. 



In the library of the future, classified on the decimal system, or 

 Cutter's expansive, every section should contain a shelf of cards 

 on which should be collected, arranged, verified, and even translated 

 this ancient material, which may throw light on new studies and 

 on new experiments; for the empirical methods of our forefathers, 

 like tradition and legend, have a basis of truth which is not to be 

 despised. Meanwhile the modern library, which in this land pros- 

 pers and exults in a youth strong and full of promise, should collect 

 this material, and thus spare the students at your universities the 

 long researches needed to assimilate the ancient literature of every 

 subject. The modern library, the American library, would not 

 need to acquire and accumulate with great expense all the ancient 

 mass of human knowledge in order to make use of the work of past 

 generations; it need only collect the extract of this work, oppor- 

 tunely chosen, sifted, classified, and translated. This would be an 

 immense advantage to its scholars, and the internationalism of 

 science, of whose certain advent I have spoken to you, would find in 

 this first exchange, in this fertile importation, its immediate applica- 

 tion. Why should students and specialists be sent to begin new re- 

 searches in learned and dusty volumes, when this work already has 

 been done by the great champions of erudition in their miscellany, 

 in their bibliographical encyclopedias? Let us rather try to spread 

 abroad a knowledge of this treasure, this well of science; let us 

 publish information about it; let us draw largely from its pure and 

 health-giving waters. You will not be without guides who will lead 

 you to it, who can and will give you to drink of its fresh waters. 



