A Librarian's Open Shelf Part 6

So you may know where it is best to go in your search for inspiration from books, for we know where seekers in the past have most often found it. He who could read the Bible or Shakespeare without finding some of it is the exception. It may be looked for in the great poets--Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, Hugo, Keats, Goethe; or the great historians--Tacitus, Herodotus, Froissart, Macaulay, Taine, Bancroft; or in the great travellers from Sir John Mandeville down, or in biographies like Boswell's life of Johnson, or in books of science--Laplace, Lagrange, Darwin, Tyndall, Helmholtz; in the lives of the great artists; in the great novels and romances--Thackeray, Balzac, Hawthorne, d.i.c.kens, George Eliot. Yet each and all of these may leave you cold and may pick up your gem in some out-of-the-way corner where neither you nor anyone else would think of looking for it.

Did you ever see a car-conductor fumbling about in the dark with the trolley pole, trying to hit the wire? While he is pulling it down and letting it fly up again, making fruitless dabs in the air, the car is dark and motionless; in vain the motorman turns his controller, in vain do the pa.s.sengers long for light. But sooner or later the pole strikes the wire; down it flows the current that was there all the time up in the air; in a jiffy the car is in motion and ablaze with light. So your search for inspiration in literature may be long and unsuccessful; you are dark and motionless. But the life-giving current from some great man's brain is flowing through some book not far away. One day you will make the connection and your life will in a trice be filled with light and instinct with action.

And before we leave this subject of inspiration, let us dwell for a moment on that to be obtained from one's literary setting in general--from the totality of one's literary a.s.sociations and impressions, as distinguished from that gained from some specific pa.s.sage or idea.

It has been said that it takes two to tell the truth; one to speak and one to listen. In like manner we may say that two persons are necessary to a great artistic interpretation--one to create and one to appreciate. And of no art is this more true than it is of literature. The thought that we are thus cooperating with Shakespeare and Schiller and Hugo in bringing out the full effect of their deathless conceptions is an inspiring one and its consideration may aid us in realizing the essential oneness of the human race, so far as its intellectual life is concerned.

Would you rather be a citizen of the United States than, we will say, of Nicaragua? You might be as happy, as well educated, as well off, there as here. Why do you prefer your present status? Simply and solely because of a.s.sociations and relations.h.i.+ps. If this is sentiment, as it doubtless is, it is the kind of sentiment that rules the world--it is in the same cla.s.s as friends.h.i.+p, loyalty, love of kin, affection for home. The links that bind us to the past and the threads that stretch out into the future are more satisfactory to us here in the United States, with the complexity of its interests for us, than they would be in Nicaragua, or Guam, or Iceland.

Then of what country in the realm of literature do you desire to be a citizen? Of the one where Shakespeare is king and where your familiar and daily speech is with the great ones of this earth--those whose wise, witty, good, or inspiring words, spoken for centuries past, have been recorded in books? Or would you prefer to dwell with triviality and ba.n.a.lity--perhaps with Laura Jean Libbey or even with Mary J. Holmes, and those a little better than these--or a little worse.

I am one of those who believe in the best a.s.sociations, literary as well as social. And a.s.sociations may have their effect even if they are apparently trivial or superficial.

When the open-shelf library was first introduced we were told that one of its chief advantages was that it encouraged "browsing"--the somewhat aimless rambling about and dipping here and there into a book. Obviously this can not be done in a closed-shelf library. But of late it has been suggested, in one quarter or another, that although this may be a pleasant occupation to some, or even to most, it is not a profitable one. Opponents of the open shelf of whom there are still one or two, here and there, find in this conclusion a reason for negativing the argument in its favor, while those of its advocates who accept this view see in it only a reason for basing that argument wholly on other grounds.

Now those of us who like a thing do not relish being told that it is not good for us. We feel that pleasure was intended as an outward sign of benefits received and although it may in abnormal conditions deceive us, we are right in demanding proof before distrusting its indications. When the cow absorbs physical nutriment by browsing, she does so without further reason than that she likes it. Does the absorber of mental pabulum from books argue wrongly from similar premises?

Many things are hastily and wrongly condemned because they do not achieve certain results that they were not intended to achieve. And in particular, when a thing exists in several degrees or grades, some one of those grades is often censured, although good in itself, because it is not a grade or two higher. Obviously everything depends on what is required. When a shopper wants just three yards of cloth, she would be foolish to buy four.

She would, of course, be even more foolish to imagine that, if she really wished four, three would do just as well. But if a man wants to go to the eighth story of a building, he should not be condemned because he does not mount to the ninth; if he wishes a light lunch, he should not be found fault with for not ordering a seven-course dinner. And yet we continually hear persons accused of "superficiality" who purposely and knowingly acquire some slight degree of knowledge of a subject instead of a higher degree. And others are condemned, we will say, for reading for amus.e.m.e.nt when they might have read for serious information, without inquiring whether amus.e.m.e.nt, in this instance, was not precisely what they needed.

It may be, therefore, that browsing is productive of some good result, and that it fails to effect some other, perhaps some higher, result which its critics have wrongly fixed upon as the one desirable thing in this connection.

When a name embodies a figure of speech, we may often learn something by following up the figure to see how far it holds good. What does an animal do, and what does it not do, when it "browses"? In the first place it eats food--fresh, growing food; but, secondly, it eats this food by cropping off the tips of the herbage, not taking much at once, and again, it moves about from place to place, eating now here and now there and then making selection, from one motive or another, but presumably following the dictates of its own taste or fancy. What does it not do? First, it does not, from choice, eat anything bad. Secondly, it does not necessarily consume all of its food in this way. If it finds a particularly choice spot, it may confine its feeding to that spot; or, if its owner sees fit, he may remove it to the stable, where it may stand all day and eat what he chooses to give it. The benefits of browsing are, first, the nourishment actually derived from the food taken, coupled with the fact that it is taken in small quant.i.ties, and in great variety; and secondly, the knowledge of good spots, obtained from the testing of one spot after another, throughout the whole broad pasture.

Now I submit that our figure of speech holds good in all these particulars. The literary "browser" partakes of his mental food from books and is thereby nourished and stimulated; he takes it here and there in brief quant.i.ties, moving from section to section and from shelf to shelf, selecting choice morsels of literature as fancy may dictate. He does not, if he is a healthy reader, absorb voluntarily anything that will hurt him, and this method of literary absorption does not preclude other methods of mental nourishment. He may like a book so much that he proceeds to devour it whole, or his superiors in knowledge may remove him to a place where necessary mental food is administered more or less forcibly. And having gone so far with our comparison, we shall make no mistake if we go a little further and say that the benefits of browsing to the reader are twofold, as they are to the material feeder--the absorption of actual nutriment in his own wilful, wayward manner--a little at a time and in great variety; and the knowledge of good reading obtained from such a wide testing of the field.

Are not these real benefits, and are they not desirable? I fear that our original surmise was correct and that browsing is condemned not for what it does, but because it fails to do something that it could not be expected to do. Of course, if one were to browse continuously he would be unable to feed in any other way. Attendance upon school or the continuous reading of any book whatever would be obviously impossible. To avoid misunderstanding, therefore, we will agree at this point that whatever may be said here in commendation of browsing is on condition that it be occasional and not excessive and that the normal amount of continuous reading and study proceed together with it.

Having settled, therefore, that browsing is a good thing when one does not occupy ones' whole time with it, let us examine its advantages a little more in detail.

First: about the mental nourishment that is absorbed in browsing; the specific information, the appreciation of what is good, the intellectual stimulation--not that which comes from reading suggested or guided by browsing, but from the actual process itself. I have heard it strenuously denied that any such absorption occurs; the bits taken are too small, the motion of the browser is too rapid, the whole process is too desultory.

Let us see. In the first place a knowledge of authors and t.i.tles and of the general character of their works is by no means to be despised. I heard the other day of a presumably educated woman who betrayed in a conversation her ignorance of Omar Khayyam--not lack of acquaintance with his works, but lack of knowledge that such a person had ever existed. If at some period in her life she had held in her hand a copy of "The Rubaiyat," and had glanced at its back, without even opening it, how much embarra.s.sment she might have been spared! And if, in addition, she had glanced within for just ten seconds and had discovered that he wrote poetry in stanzas of four lines each, she would have known as much about Omar as do many of those who would contemptuously scoff at her ignorance.

With so brief effort may we acquire literary knowledge sufficient to avoid embarra.s.sment in ordinary conversation. Browsing in a good library, if the browser has a memory, will soon equip him with a wide range of knowledge of this kind. Nor is such knowledge to be sneered at as superficial. It is all that we know, or need to know, about scores of authors. One may never study higher mathematics, but it may be good for him to know that Lagrange was a French author who wrote on a.n.a.lytical mechanics, that Euclid was a Greek geometer, and that Hamilton invented quaternions. All this and vastly more may be impressed on the mind by an hour in the mathematical alcove of a library of moderate size. And it will do no harm to a boy to know that Benvenuto Cellini wrote his autobiography, even if the inevitable perusal of the book is delayed for several years, or that Felicia Hemans, James Thomson, and Robert Herrick wrote poetry, independently of familiarity with their works, or that "Lamia" is not something to eat or "As you like it" a popular novel. Information of this kind is almost impossible to acquire from lists or from oral statement, whereas a moment's handling of a book in the concrete may fix it in the mind for good and all. So far, we have not supposed that even a word of the contents has been read. What, now, if a sentence, a stanza, a paragraph, a page, pa.s.ses into the brain through the eye? Those who measure literary effect by the thousand words or by the hour are making a great mistake. The lightning flash is over in a fraction of a second, but in that time it may reveal a scene of beauty, may give the traveller warning of the fatal precipice, or may shatter the farmer's home into kindling wood. Intellectual lightning may strike the "browser" as he stands there book in hand before the shelf. A word, a phrase, may sear into his brain--may turn the current of his whole life. And even if no such epoch-making words meet his eye, in how brief a time may he read, digest, appreciate, some of the gems of literature! Leigh Hunt's "Jennie kissed me" would probably take about thirty seconds; on a second reading he would have it by heart--the joy of a life-time. How many meaty epigrams would take as long? The whole of Gray's "Elegy" is hardly beyond the browser's limit.

In an editorial on the Harvard Cla.s.sics in the "Chicago evening post", (April 22), we read, "the cultural tabloid has very little virtue;... to gain everything that a book has to give one must be submerged in it, saturated and absorbed". This is very much like saying, "there is very little nourishment in a sandwich; to get the full effect of a luncheon you must eat everything on the table". It is a truism to say that you can not get everything in a book without reading all of it; but it by no means follows that the virtue of less than the whole is negligible.

So much for the direct effect of what one may thus take in, bit by bit.

The indirect effect is even more important. For by sampling a whole literature, as he does, he not only gets a bird's-eye view of it, but he finds out what lie likes and what he dislikes; he begins to form his taste. Are you afraid that he will form it wrong? I am not. We are a.s.suming that the library where he browses is a good one; here is no chance of evil, only a choice between different kinds of good. And even if the evil be there, it is astonis.h.i.+ng how the healthy mind will let it slip and fasten eagerly on the good. Would you prefer a taste fixed by someone who tells the browser what he ought to like? Then that is not the reader's own taste at all, but that of his informant. We have too much of this sort of thing--too many readers without an atom of taste of their own who will say, for instance, that they adore George Meredith, because some one has told them that all intellectual persons do so. The man who frankly loves George Ade and can yet see nothing in Shakespeare may one day discover Shakespeare. The man who reads Shakespeare merely because he thinks he ought to is hopeless.

But what a triumph, to stand spell-bound by the art of a writer whose name you never heard, and then discover that he is one of the great ones of the world! Nought is comparable to it except perhaps to pick out all by yourself in the exhibition the one picture that the experts have chosen for the museum or to be able to say you liked olives the first time you tasted them.

Who are your favorites? Did some one guide you to them or did you find them yourselves? I will warrant that in many cases you discovered them and that this is why you love them. I discovered DeQuincey's romances, Praed's poetry, Beranger in French, Heine in German, "The Arabian nights", Moliere, Irving's "Alhambra," hundreds of others probably. I am sure that I love them all far more than if some one had told me they were good books. If I had been obliged to read them in school and pa.s.s an examination on them, I should have hated them. The teacher who can write an examination paper on Gray's "Elegy", would, I firmly believe, cut up his grandmother alive before the physiology cla.s.s.

And next to the author or the book that you have discovered yourself comes the one that the discoverer himself--your boy or girl friend--tells you about. _He_ knows a good thing--_she_ knows it! No school nonsense about that; no adult misunderstanding. I found out Poe that way, and Thackeray's "Major Gahagan", and many others.

To go back to our old ill.u.s.tration and consider for a moment not the book but the mind, the personality whose ideas it records, such a.s.sociation with books represents a.s.sociation with one's fellowmen in society--at a reception, in school or college, at a club. Some we pa.s.s by with a nod, with some we exchange a word; sometimes there is a warm handgrasp; sometimes a long conversation. No matter what the mental contact may be, it has its effects--we are continually gaining knowledge, making new friends, receiving fresh inspiration. The complexion of this kind of daily a.s.sociation determines the cast of one's mind, the thoroughness of his taste, the usefulness or uselessness of what he does. A man is known by the company he keeps, because that company forms him; he gets from it what becomes brain of his brain and soul of his soul.

And no less is he formed by his mental a.s.sociations with the good and the great of all ages whom he meets in books and who talk to him there. More rather than less; for into a book the writer puts generally what is best in him, laying aside the pettiness, the triviality, the downright wickedness that may have characterized him in the flesh.

I have often heard the comment from one who had met face to face a writer whose work he loved--"Oh! he disappointed me so!" How disappointed might we be with Thackeray, with d.i.c.kens, even with Shakespeare, could we meet them in the fles.h.!.+ Now they can not disappoint us, for we know only what they have left on record--the best, the most enduring part, purified from what is gross and earthly.

In and among such company as this it is your privilege to live and move, almost without money and without price. Thank G.o.d for books; let them be your friends and companions through life--for information, for recreation, but above all for inspiration.

ATOMIC THEORIES OF ENERGY[6]

[6] Read before the St. Louis Academy of Science.

A theory involving some sort of a discrete or discontinuous structure of energy has been put forward by Prof. Max Planck of the University of Berlin. The various aspects of this theory are discussed and elaborated by the late M. Henri Poincare in a paper ent.i.tled "L'Hypothese des Quanta,"

published in the _Revue Scientifique_ (Paris, Feb. 21, 1912).

A paper in which a discontinuous or "atomic" structure of energy was suggested was prepared by the present writer fifteen years ago but remains unpublished for reasons that will appear later. Although he has no desire to put in a claim of priority and is well aware that failure to publish would put any such claim out of court, it seems to him that in connection with present radical developments in physical theory the paper, together with some correspondence relating thereto, has historical interest.

Planck's theory was suggested by thermodynamical considerations. In the paper now to be quoted the matter was approached from the standpoint of a criterion for determining the ident.i.ty of two portions of matter or of energy. The paper is as follows:

_Some Consideration on the Ident.i.ty of Definite Portions of Energy_

It has been remarked recently that physicists are now divided into two opposing schools according to the way in which they view the subject of energy, some regarding it as a mere mathematical abstraction and others looking upon it as a physical ent.i.ty, filling s.p.a.ce and continuously migrating by definite paths from one place to another. It may be added that there are numerous factions within these two parties; for instance, not all of those who consider energy to be something more than a mere mathematical expression would maintain that a given quant.i.ty of it retains its ident.i.ty just as a given quant.i.ty of matter does. In fact a close a.n.a.lysis would possibly show that opinions are graded very closely and continuously from a view hardly differing from that of Lagrange, who clearly saw and freely used the mathematical considerations involving energy before the word had been invented or its physical meaning developed, up to that stated recently in its extreme form by Professor Ostwald, who would replace what he terms a mechanical theory of the universe by an "energetical" theory, and would dwell exclusively on energy as opposed to its vehicles.

Differences of opinion of this sort very frequently reduce to differences of definition, and in this case the meaning of the word "ident.i.ty" or some similar word or phrase has undoubtedly much to do with the view that is taken of the matter. It may be interesting, for instance, to look for a moment at our ideas of the ident.i.ty of matter and the extent to which they are influenced by the accepted theory of its const.i.tution.

Very few persons would hesitate to admit that the matter that now const.i.tutes the universe is identical in amount with that which const.i.tuted it one million years ago, and that any given portion of that matter is identical with an equal amount of matter that then existed, although the situations of the parts of that portion might be and probably were widely different in the two cla.s.ses. To a.s.sert this is of course a very different thing from a.s.serting that the ident.i.ty of the two portions or any parts thereof could have been practically shown by following them during all their changes of location or state. That cannot be done even in the case of some simple changes that are effected in a fraction of a second. For instance, if water from the pail A be mixed with water from the pail B there is no possible way of telling which pail any given portion of the mixture came from or in what proportions, yet it is certain that such portion is identical with a portion of equal ma.s.s that recently occupied part of one or both pails.

How far our certainty as to this is influenced by our ideas regarding the ultimate const.i.tution of the water is worthy of investigation. All who accept the molecular theory, for instance, will regard our inability to trace the elements of a mixture as due to purely physical limitations. A set of Maxwell's "demons" if bidden to watch the molecules of the water in pail A, one demon being a.s.signed to each molecule, would be able to tell us at any time the precise proportions of any given part of the mixture.

But if we should not accept the molecular theory and believe for instance, that water is a continuum, absolutely h.o.m.ogeneous, no matter how small portions of it be selected, then our demons would be as powerless as we ourselves now are to trace the const.i.tuents in the mixture.

We are now in a position to ask the question: Is the matter in a mixture of two continua identical with that of its const.i.tuents? The ident.i.ty certainly seems of a different kind or degree from that which obtains in the first case, for there is no part, however small, that was derived from one pail alone. The mixture is something more than a mere juxtaposition of elements each of which has retained its ident.i.ty; it is now of suck nature that no part of it is identical with any part of A alone or of B alone, nor of A+B, where the sign + denotes simple juxtaposition. It is identical, to be sure, with a perfect mixture of certain parts of A and B, but this is simply saying that it is identical with what it is now, that is, with itself, not with something that went before.

Probably no one now believes that water or any other kind of matter is a continuum, but the bearing of what has been said may be seen when we remember that this is precisely the present stage of our belief regarding energy.

No one, so far as I know, has ventured to suggest what may be termed a molecular theory of energy, a somewhat remarkable fact when we consider the control now exercised over all thought in physics by molecular theories of matter. While we now believe, for instance, that a material body, say a crystal, can by no possibility increase continuously in ma.s.s, but must do so step by step, the minimum ma.s.s of matter that can be added being the molecule, we believe on the contrary that the energy possessed by the same body can and may increase with absolutely perfect continuity, being hampered by no such restriction.

It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss whether we have grounds for belief that there is such a thing as a minimum quant.i.ty, or atom, of energy, that does not separate into smaller parts, no matter what changes it undergoes. Suffice it to say that there appears to be no _a priori_ absurdity in such an idea. At first sight both matter and energy appear non-molecular in structure. But we have been forced to look upon the gradual growth of a crystal as a step-by-step process, and we may some day, by equally cogent considerations, be forced to regard the gradual increase of energy of an accelerating body as also a step-by-step process, although the discontinuity is as invisible to the eye in the latter case as in the former.

Without following this out any farther, however, the point may be here emphasized that it is hardly possible for one who, like the majority of physicists, regards matter as molecular and energy as a continuum, to hold the same ideas regarding the ident.i.ty of the two. Efforts to show that definite portions of energy, like definite portions of matter, retain their ident.i.ty have hitherto been made chiefly on the lines of a demonstration that energy travels by definite and continuous paths in s.p.a.ce just as matter does. This is very well, but it would appear to be necessary to supplement it with evidence to show that the lines representing these paths do not form at their intersections continuous blurs that not only forbid any practical attempt at identification on emergence, but make it doubtful whether we can in any true sense call the issuing path identical with the entering one. Otherwise the ident.i.ty of energy can be admitted to be only that kind of ident.i.ty that could be preserved by matter if its molecular structure did not exist. One who can admit that this sort of ident.i.ty is the same sort that can be preserved by molecular matter may be able to hold the ident.i.ty of energy in the present state of the evidence, but the present att.i.tude of physicists would seem to show that, whether they realize the connection of the two subjects or not, they cannot take this view. In other words, modern views of the ident.i.ty of matter seem closely connected with modern views of its structure, and the same connection will doubtless hold good for energy.

Regarding the probable success of an attempt to prove that energy has a "structure" a.n.a.logous to the molecular structure of matter, any prediction would doubtless be rash just now. The writer has been unable, up to the present time, to disprove the proposition, but the subject is one of corresponding importance to that of the whole molecular theory of matter and should not be entered upon lightly.

The writer freely acknowledges at present that the ill.u.s.trations in the foregoing are badly chosen and some of the statements are too strong, but it still represents essentially his ideas on the subject. No reputable scientific journal would undertake to publish it. The paper was then sent to Prof. J. Willard Gibbs of Yale, and elicited the following letter from him:

"NEW HAVEN, JUNE 2, 1897.

"MY DEAR MR. BOSTWICK: