The Public Library: "A Leaven'd and PreparÉd Choice"

Last evening's jesting pretense that the party from the States had stopped on the border and removed the boundary line to bring it with them here, into the very Canadian capital, was not quite all a jest. The American Library Association is itself a witness that though the boundary line firmly and clearly defines the limits of rule of the two countries in some great and essential things, some

it need not, it does not, even divide, still less alienate, the two peoples.

It is one of the worthiest, most auspicious foundations of the American Library Association that it is, and has ever been, continental not national in its sympathy and membership. Within its circle "all who profess and call themselves" English-speaking may unite their best thought and their best endeavor for this important public service.

There are many fundamental library principles that are common to both countries and your Program Committee has intended to arrange the program and discussions to take account of these, leaving to other and minor meetings such things as are national or local in their bearing. The committee has wished to transcend all division by boundary lines. By so much the jest was fact.

The attempt has been made to stand away from detail of all sorts so far that it may be possible to see the library world as "a world" indeed, "a whole of parts," as a system of members, each member distinct yet, by virtue of the very peculiarities which constitute its distinctness, contributing to the unity of the whole.

We shall fail to see the library world thus, as a world, as a whole unless, amid the mass of facts, of experiences, of needs, of adaptations involved, we can finally discern and seize upon the true center, the truly dominant thing.

If we could once see the true center as the center, and the mass of detail taking ordered place about it; if we could once perceive the dominant that should surely rule, and lesser matters in due subjection to that rule, then from the obvious things ever before our eyes, and only too familiar, by that very familiarity made difficult to apprehend, the library might all at once appeal as an entity, as a clear conception. So the forest becomes visible to the artist's eyes, the forest, formed of trees, but never really seen until all at once in the vision of the forest the trees are lost to sight.

Some modes of thought, some phrases of expression which have been used are those which the philosopher has weighed and clarified for his own carefully measured statements. Do not smile at my temerity, and on the other hand do not be in the least alarmed. I ventured but a little way and you will not be called to go far into the philosopher's country under my lead. Even if one be no swimmer it is an experience to venture out, with careful balance, feeling for secure foothold upon the solid bed, even a little way into a mighty stream whose full mid-current would sweep over one's head. One gets, out of even so limited an adventure, a sense of the sweep of the river, feels the embrace and pull of the current, stoops to drink a little of the clear, bright, deep waters, ever thereafter to thirst for deeper draughts and to long for strength and mastery to plunge into and breast the full stream.

In trying to find warrant for my own thoughts and ordered and lucid statement for them, I have sought and consulted certain books and some of them were too hard for my full reading. I shall not further acknowledge my debt now but, once more departing from precedent, I shall list them for print at the end of the address.

In the wish to find the center or dominant of the library world it would be presumptuous for me to dogmatize and say "Lo here! this is the point," or "Behold! this is the principle." In the very name of the institution which we are talking about there are two elements joined—Public, and Library—and it seems quite obviously proper to try the first as the center.

Perhaps the application which follows might repel some as narrow, as exclusive of any but a single type of libraries. The principle itself may, however, be made to apply to the entire library world by recognizing as "public" all libraries which are not private, and by defining public anew as applied to each group or type of libraries, always letting it include all those individuals for whose use and pleasure the library is maintained.

What does "public" signify in Canada and the United States? What but all the people of these two great experiments in democratic society? Pray note that I say society not government. An excursion into discussion of the latter might involve dabbling in the stream of politics which would threaten dangers far more imminent, for me, than philosophy promised. To consider democratic society for a few moments very simply is a less hazardous matter.

What is any society but "a world" again, a whole, in which the great thing that matters is the level and fullness of mind that is reached through the diversities of complete development and perfection of the individual members which compose it?

The level of value and happiness for the whole can only be raised by raising the condition of the individuals and, on the other hand, that individuality is the most complete, of most real, felt value to itself, which contributes to the perfection of the whole, because it is only thus that the individual is conscious of having done his utmost.

Why try to say it again when the philosopher has said it so exactly?

"What a man really cares about—so it seems to me—may be described as making the most of the trust he has received. He does not value himself as a detached and purely self-identical subject. He values himself as the inheritor of the gifts and surroundings which are focussed in him and which it is his business to raise to their highest power. The attitude of the true noble, one in whom noblesse oblige is a simple example of what, mutatis mutandis, all men feel. The man is a representative, a trustee for the world, of certain powers and circumstances. And this cannot fail to be so. For suffering and privation are also opportunities. The question for him is how much he can make of them. This is the simple and primary point of view, and also, in the main, the true and fundamental one. It is not the bare personality or the separate destiny that occupies a healthy mind. It is the thing to be done, known and felt; in a word, the completeness of experience, his contribution to it, and his participation in it.

"At every point the web of experience is continuous; he cannot distinguish his part from that of others, and the more he realizes the continuity the less he cares about the separateness of the contribution to it.... It is impossible to overrate the co-operative element in experience."

Does it not appear then that the highest possible service to the public is service to the individual, in giving to the individual stimulus and opportunity for the fullest, most diverse, most perfect development, creating thus a world the more enriched, the more unified, in that each of its members has rich powers, functions and experience of his own?

But the crux is to come. A people, a society, is made up of individuals of diverse tastes and powers, but it includes very many who are far short of being fully alive to the powers which they may possess. If the span of such lives passes thus, if no stimulus, no illumination reaches them, life will be uninspired, unfruitful of much service, or much joy. It will not be life at its full, nor "the soul at its highest stretch."

It is not always afar from our own doors that such things happen. President Eliot says, "Do we not all know many people who seem to live in a mental vacuum—to whom, indeed, we have great difficulty in attributing immortality, because they have so little life except that of the body?"

From such conditions not only individuals but all society suffers. As a spot of unnourished, inactive tissue in a human body is a host ready to receive any one of many forms of disease, so, in the body politic, individuals not fulfilling their utmost best are soil made ready for all manner of social and political ills.

The time may come when society will recognize that many social and political ills are partly caused by its own neglect, and call not for more restrictions, for more stringent laws and severer sentences, but rather for more carefully and universally given opportunity.

Listen once more to the philosopher.

"The more highly differentiated the individuals composing a society, the more complete becomes the social bond between them. A man who feels that he is rendering to the community a service at once indispensable and only to be performed by himself, will have come near to fulfilling his part in the highest attainable scheme of social harmony."

If this be true, then there seems clear warrant for saying that the community, for its own sake, has a vital interest in trying to secure for each individual the most effective opportunity not only for discovering what his distinct contribution may be made, but also for developing his power to render that contribution most completely.

Does the community anywhere concern itself to give such opportunities? Democratic society has recognized its necessity to give a certain amount of knowledge and training by means of its schools. It is beginning to make the experiment of giving a certain amount of skill to earn a livelihood. This teaching is done in classes and a class is made up of individuals of similar knowledge and attainments, and to them is given general and identical information which tends to produce like results. The community has need for unlikeness, for individuals who can render unique service.

The community can never decide what the special individual aptitude may be. No living soul can discover for another. The "power to become" is innate and must make its own response to the stimulus which is capable of affecting it.

It is true that the universe is a great battery incessantly sending an infinity of calls of infinitely varied messages. But the receiving operator may be asleep, he may never come within range. The universe is very wide. The range of experience of all is narrow, of some pitifully narrow.

Because of lack of opportunity to see, to do, to know, to feel, it is not exaggeration to say that multitudes live a half-alive existence, never useful to their possible limit, never happy to their full, for happiness is "felt perfection."

From the beginning of time, some men have received their messages, found their work, given their service, lived life to the full and laid it down with a will. The record of these men and their accomplishment, of man's great adventure to find himself, has been written by many hands, and that record is literature.

Arnold says, "To know ourselves and the world we have, as a means to this end, to know the best that has been thought or said in the world," and "Literature may mean everything written or printed in a book."

The library is the reservoir of literature, a collection of books, but it is something more, it comes to have identity, a self of its own beyond the sum of all its books, when, by the fusing of the whole under the vital power of the minds that gather and order it, it becomes, in the Shakespearian phrase embodied in my title, "A leaven'd and preparÉd choice."

The library is the one place where time and space are set at naught. It is the microcosm of the universe.

Here all the wonders of nature are flashed back from the mirrors of eyes that have beheld them.

Here India, and the Arctic and the isles of the sea are as close at hand as Niagara.

Here Archimedes' lever, Giotto's circle, Newton's apple, Palissy's furnace, Jacquard's loom, Jamie Watt's tea-kettle, Franklin's kite are cheek by jowl with the last Marconigram.

Here the fate of Aristides, of Columbus, of Gordon is as clear to read as the doings of yesterday in Chicago.

The record of what happened at ThermopylÆ, at Lucknow, at the Alamo receives beside it the tale of the courage that rose as the Titanic sank.

What Buddha and Socrates and Jesus taught answers the cry and strengthens the heart of doubt and pain today.

The library is the great whispering gallery of noble deeds and, catching a whisper,

and goes forth.

The library is haunted with visions of beauty that Plato, that Michael Angelo, that Shelley saw—the youth exclaims "I see!" and follows his lure.

Here Clotho sits twirling her "thread-running spindle" and the youth, catching the clue, fares forth whither the fateful thread leads.

The library is almost never the goal but to many it may be the starting point whence they go forth "to strength and endeavor, love and sacrifice, the making and achievement of souls."

The public for whom the library exists has little conception or comprehension of its power. How shall such publicity as will give this knowledge of it be given?

Such publicity should make clear the larger aspects of the library's service, showing that the life of any society is "an indivisible inheritance" and the welfare of all made or marred by the condition and service of each one, therefore the library should be equipped to be universal in its appeal and service, a public necessity for individual use.

The public for whom the library exists gives it support insufficient for the task it should perform. If the library commanded respect would it not receive funds?

Books are the treasure to be gathered for its work. What shall be the principles of buying? How create the "leaven'd and preparÉd choice?"

Books are the medium of appeal, the stuff of human knowledge, experience and wisdom stored by means of the printed leaf. The extent to which each individual shares in the stored treasure of the race-mind, is, in its sum, the measure of public safety and happiness and the starting-point for service. How show, how make known the attraction and stored power of books?

Every individual must choose his own path. How leave him free to choose in a wide field?

Service, but not authority, must be at hand. What shall the tests of fitness for such service be?

The staff fit for such service must be of rare material and quality.

The members of the staff are instruments of the highest elaboration and most delicate adjustment. The requisite quality of service can only be rendered under fit conditions. It is not a matter of knowledge, conscience and will solely, it is a matter of these things plus insight, sympathy and response. Exhaustion, or an approach to it, discouragement from lack of appreciation, are like a ground wire for loss of power. Body, mind and spirit are all involved in this service. How conserve their strength, well-being and joy?

Unskilled people cannot render fit service. What are the things that matter in training? How far can training be effective.

These are the subjects that your Program Committee has thought it might interest all to consider. Certain leaders will discuss them, each according to his own will and way. In their wisdom and in that of the discussions with which you will follow them will lie all the value of this conference.

Books Consulted: A Short List

Bosanquet, Bernard. The principle of individuality and value. Macmillan. 1912.

Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth. Vol. 2, p. 828, and chapter CII. Macmillan. 1910.

Chesterton, G. K. Manalive. Lane. 1912.

Douglas, Robert. The choice. Macmillan. 1911.

Eliot, C. W. The function of education in democratic society. In his Educational reform. Century. 1908.

Goldmark, Josephine. Fatigue and efficiency. Charities Pub. Co. 1912.

Hobhouse, L. T. The individual and the state. In his Social evolution and political theory. Columbia Univ. Press. 1911.

—Liberalism. Holt. 1911.

Jones, Henry. Idealism as a personal creed. Macmillan. 1909.

—Working faith of the social reformer. Macmillan. 1910.

Macdonald, Greville. The child's inheritance: its scientific and imaginative meaning. Smith, Elder. 1910.

Mark, Thiselton. The unfolding of personality as the chief aim of education. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1911.

Sidis, Boris. Philistine and genius. Moffatt. 1911.

Woodberry, G. E. The torch: eight lectures on race power in literature. McClure. 1905.

The PRESIDENT: I have very great pleasure in presenting one who in truth needs no introduction to you; one who has not for some time appeared on our platform but whom I know you will all welcome with pleasure, Miss TESSA L. KELSO.

Miss Kelso, of the Baker and Taylor Co., New York City, spoke informally from notes only on the topic, "Publicity for the sake of information: the librarian's point of view," and has been unable to furnish a copy of her remarks for publication.

The PRESIDENT: I think you may have seen it mentioned once or twice in the course of your reading, that there was such a thing as the "Wisconsin idea." Now, I would not for a moment, having been born in that lovely state, have you get any notion that that "Wisconsin idea" is singular. We have therefore asked to come and talk to us this morning a gentleman who, those closest to him say, is a repository of "Wisconsin ideas," and I have great pleasure in introducing to you Mr. WILLIAM H. HATTON,—"Mr." Hatton by request, though he is ordinarily known in his own country as Senator Hatton.