A Librarian's Open Shelf Part 7

"I regret that I have allowed your letter to lie so long unanswered. It was in fact not very easy to answer, and when one lays a letter aside to answer, the weeks slip away very fast.

"I do not think that you state the matter quite right in regard to the mixture of fluids if they were continuous. The mixing of water as I regard it would be like this, if it were continuous and not molecular. Suppose you should take strips of white and red gla.s.s and heat them until soft and twist them together. Keep on drawing them out and doubling them up and twisting them together. It would soon require a microscope to distinguish the red and white gla.s.s, which would be drawn out into thinner and thinner filaments if the matter were continuous. But it would be always only a matter of optical power to distinguish perfectly the portion of red and white gla.s.s. The stirring up of water from two pails would not really mix them but only entangle filaments from the pails.

"To come to the case of energy. All our ideas concerning energy seem to require that it is capable of gradual increase. Thus the energy due to velocity can increase continuously if velocity can.

Since the energy is as the square of the velocity, if the velocity can only increase discontinuously by equal increments, the energy of the body will increase by unequal increments in such a way as to make the exchange of energy between bodies a very awkward matter to adjust.

"But apart from the question of the increase of energy by discontinuous increments, the question of relative and absolute motion makes it very hard to give a particular position to energy, since the 'energy' we speak of in any case is not one quant.i.ty but may be interpreted in a great many ways. Take the important case of two equal elastic b.a.l.l.s. One, moving, strikes the other at rest, we say, and gives it nearly all its energy. But we have no right to call one ball at rest and we can not say (as anything absolute) which of the b.a.l.l.s has lost and which has gained energy.

If there is such a thing as absolute energy of motion it is something entirely unknowable to us. Take the solar system, supposed isolated. We may take as our origin of coordinates the center of gravity of the system. Or we may take an origin with respect to which the center of gravity of the solar system has any (constant) velocity. The kinetic energy of the earth, for example, may have any value whatever, and the principle of the conservation of energy will hold in any case for the whole solar system. But the s.h.i.+fting of energy from one planet to another will take place entirely differently when we estimate the energies with reference to different origins.

"It does not seem to me that your ideas fit in with what we know about nature. If you ask my advice, I should not advise you to try to publish them.

"At best you would be entering into a discussion (perhaps not in bad company) in which words would play a greater part than precise ideas.

"This is the way I feel about it.

"I remain, "Yours faithfully, "J.W. GIBBS."

Professor Gibbs's criticism of the ill.u.s.tration of water-mixture is evidently just. Another might well have been used where the things mixed are not material--for instance, the value of money deposited in a bank. If A and B each deposits $100 to C's credit and C then draws $10, there is evidently no way of determining what part of it came from A and what from B. The structure of "value", in other words, is perfectly continuous.

Professor Gibbs's objections to an "atomic" theory of the structure of energy are most interesting. The difficulties that it involves are not overstated. In 1897 they made it unnecessary, but since that time considerations have been brought forward, and generally recognized, which may make it necessary to brave those difficulties.

Planck's theory was suggested by the apparent necessity of modifying the generally accepted theory of statistical equilibrium involving the so called "law of equipart.i.tion," enunciated first for gases and extended to liquids and solids.

In the first place the kinetic theory fixes the number of degrees of freedom of each gaseous molecule, which would be three for argon, for instance, and five for oxygen. But what prevents either from having the six degrees to which ordinary mechanical theory ent.i.tles it? Furthermore, the oxygen spectrum has more than five lines, and the molecule must therefore vibrate in more than five modes. "Why," asks Poincare, "do certain degrees of freedom appear to play no part here; why are they, so to speak, 'ankylosed'?" Again, suppose a system in statistical equilibrium, each part gaining on an average, in a short time, exactly as much as it loses. If the system consists of molecules and ether, as the former have a finite number of degrees of freedom and the latter an infinite number, the unmodified law of equipart.i.tion would require that the ether should finally appropriate all energy, leaving none of it to the matter. To escape this conclusion we have Rayleigh's law that the radiated energy, for a given wave length, is proportional to the absolute temperature, and for a given temperature is in inverse ratio to the fourth power of the wave-length. This is found by Planck to be experimentally unverifiable, the radiation being less for small wave-lengths and low temperatures, than the law requires.

Still again, the specific heats of solids, instead of being sensibly constant at all temperatures, are found to diminish rapidly in the low temperatures now available in liquid air or hydrogen and apparently tend to disappear at absolute zero. "All takes place," says Poincare, "as if these molecules lost some of their degrees of freedom in cooling--as if some of their articulations froze at the limit."

Planck attempts to explain these facts by introducing the idea of what he calls "quanta" of energy. To quote from Poincare's paper:

"How should we picture a radiating body? We know that a Hertz resonator sends into the ether Hertzian waves that are identical with luminous waves; an incandescent body must then be regarded as containing a very great number of tiny resonators. When the body is heated, these resonators acquire energy, start vibrating and consequently radiate.

"Planck's hypothesis consists in the supposition that each of these resonators can acquire or lose energy only by abrupt jumps, in such a way that the store of energy that it possesses must always be a multiple of a constant quant.i.ty, which he calls a 'quantum'--must be composed of a whole number of quanta. This indivisible unit, this quantum, is not the same for all resonators; it is in inverse ratio to the wave-length, so that resonators of short period can take in energy only in large pieces, while those of long period can absorb or give it out by small bits. What is the result? Great effort is necessary to agitate a short-period resonator, since this requires at least a quant.i.ty of energy equal to its quantum, which is great. The chances are, then, that these resonators will keep quiet, especially if the temperature is low, and it is for this reason that there is relatively little short-wave radiation in 'black radiation'... The diminution of specific-heats is explained similarly: When the temperature falls, a large number of vibrators fall below their quantum and cease to vibrate, so that the total energy diminishes faster than the old theories require."

Here we have the germs of an atomic theory of energy. As Poincare now points out, the trouble is that the quanta are not constant. In his study of the matter he notes that the work of Prof. Wilhelm Wien, of Wurzburg, leads by theory to precisely the conclusion announced by Planck that if we are to hold to the accepted ideas of statistical equilibrium the energy can vary only by quanta inversely proportional to wave-length. The mechanical property of the resonators imagined by Planck is therefore precisely that which Wien's theory requires. If we are to suppose atoms of energy, therefore, they must be variable atoms. There are other objections which need not be touched upon here, the whole theory being in a very early stage. To quote Poincare again:

"The new conception is seductive from a certain standpoint: for some time the tendency has been toward atomism. Matter appears to us as formed of indivisible atoms; electricity is no longer continuous, not infinitely divisible. It resolves itself into equally-charged electrons; we have also now the magneton, or atom of magnetism. From this point of view the quanta appear as _atoms_ of _energy_. Unfortunately the comparison may not be pushed to the limit; a hydrogen atom is really invariable.... The electrons preserve their individuality amid the most diverse vicissitudes, is it the same with the atoms of energy? We have, for instance, three quanta of energy in a resonator whose wave-length is 3; this pa.s.ses to a second resonator whose wave-length is 5; it now represents not 3 but 5 quanta, since the quantum of the new resonator is smaller and in the transformation the number of atoms and the size of each has changed."

If, however, we replace the atom of energy by an "atom of action," these atoms may be considered equal and invariable. The whole study of thermodynamic equilibrium has been reduced by the French mathematical school to a question of probability. "The probability of a continuous variable is obtained by considering elementary independent domains of equal probability.... In the cla.s.sic dynamics we use, to find these elementary domains, the theorem that two physical states of which one is the necessary effect of the other are equally probable. In a physical system if we represent by _q_ one of the generalized coordinates and by _p_ the corresponding momentum, according to Liouville's theorem the domain [double integral]_dpdq_, considered at given instant, is invariable with respect to the time if _p_ and _q_ vary according to Hamilton's equations. On the other hand _p_ and _q_ may, at a given instant take all possible values, independent of each other. Whence it follows that the elementary domain is infinitely small, of the magnitude _dpdq_.... The new hypothesis has for its object to restrict the variability of _p_ and _q_ so that these variables will only change by jumps.... Thus the number of elementary domains of probability is reduced and the extent of each is augmented. The hypothesis of quanta of action consists in supposing that these domains are all equal and no longer infinitely small but finite and that for each [double integral]_dpdq_ equals _h_, _h_ being a constant."

Put a little less mathematically, this simply means that as energy equals action multiplied by frequency, the fact that the quantum of energy is proportional to the frequency (or inversely to the wave-length as stated above) is due simply to the fact that the quantum of action is constant--a real atom. The general effect on our physical conceptions, however, is the same: we have a purely discontinuous universe--discontinuous not only in matter but in energy and the flow of time. M. Poincare thus puts it: "A physical system is susceptible only of a finite number of distinct states; it leaps from one of these to the next without pa.s.sing through any continuous series of intermediate states."

He notes later:

"The universe, then, leaps suddenly from one state to another; but in the interval it must remain immovable, and the divers instants during which it keeps in the same state can no longer be discriminated from one another; we thus reach a conception of the discontinuous variation of time--the atom of _time_."

I quote in conclusion, Poincare's final remarks:

"The present state of the question is thus as follows: the old theories, which hitherto seemed to account for all the known phenomena, have met with an unexpected obstacle. Seemingly a modification becomes necessary. A hypothesis has presented itself to M. Planck's mind, but so strange a one that one is tempted to seek every means of escaping it; these means, however, have been sought vainly. The new theory, however, raises a host of difficulties, many of which are real and not simply illusions due to the indolence of our minds, unwilling to change their modes of thought....

"Is discontinuity to reign through out the physical universe, and is its triumph definitive? Or rather shall we find that it is but apparent and hides a series of continuous processes?... To try to give an opinion just now on these questions would only be to waste ink."

It only remains to call attention again to the fact that this conception of the discontinuity of energy, the acceptance of which Poincare says would be "the most profound revolution that natural philosophy has undergone since Newton" was suggested by the present writer fifteen years ago. Its reception and serious consideration by one of the first mathematical physicists of the world seems a sufficient justification of its suggestion then as a legitimate scientific hypothesis.

THE ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT OF IDEAS

Writing is a device for the storage of ideas--the only device for this purpose prior to the invention of the phonograph, and not now likely to be generally superseded. A book consists of stored ideas; sometimes it is like a box, from which the contents must be lifted slowly and with more or less toil; sometimes like a storage battery where one only has to make the right kind of contact to get a discharge. At any rate, if we want people to use books or to use them more, or to use them better, or to use a different kind from that which they now use, we must lose sight for a moment of the material part of the book, which is only the box or the lead and acid of the storage battery, and fix our attention on the stored ideas, which are what everybody wants--everybody, that is, except those who collect books as curiosities. The subject of this lecture is thus only library advertising, about which we have heard a good deal of late, but we shall try to confine its applications to this inner or ideal substance which it is our special business as librarians to purvey. And first, in considering the matter, it may be worth while to say a word about advertising in general. Practically an advertis.e.m.e.nt is an announcement by somebody who has something to distribute. Announcements of this kind may be cla.s.sified, it seems to me, as economic, uneconomic and illegitimate.

The most elementary form is that of the person who tells you where you can get something that you want--a simple statement that someone is a barber or an inn-keeper, or gives music lessons, or has shoes for sale. This may be accompanied by an effort to show that the goods offered are of specially good quality or have some feature that makes them particularly desirable, either to consumers in general or to those of a certain cla.s.s.

This is all surely economic, so long as nothing but the truth is told.

Next we have an effort not only to supply existing wants and to direct them into some particular channel, but to create a new field, to make people realize a lack previously not felt; in other words to make people want something that they need. This may be done simply by exhibiting or describing the article or it may require long and skillful presentation of the matter. All this is still economic. But it requires only a step to carry us across the line. Next the enthusiastic advertiser strives to make someone want that which he does not need. As may be seen, the line here is difficult to determine, but this sort of advertising is surely not economic. So long as the thing not needed is not really injurious, however, the advertising cannot be called illegitimate. It is simply uneconomic. The world would be better off without it, but we may look for its abolition only to the increase of good judgment and intelligence among consumers. When an attempt however, is made to cause a man to want something that is really injurious, then the act becomes illegitimate and should be prevented. Another cla.s.s of illegitimate advertising is that which would be perfectly allowable if it were truthful and becomes objectionable only because its representations are false. It may be ostensibly of any of the types noted above.

As we have already noted, the material objects distributed by the librarian are valued not for their physical characteristics but for a different reason altogether, the fact that they contain stored ideas.

Ideas which, according to some, are merely the relative positions of material particles in the brain, and which are indisputably accompanied and conditioned by such positions, here subsist in the form of peculiar and visible arrangements of particles of printer's ink upon paper, which are capable under certain conditions of generating in the human brain ideas precisely similar to those that gave them birth. And although the book cannot think for itself, but must merely preserve the idea intrusted to it, without change, it is vastly superior in stability to the brain that gave it birth, so that thousands of years after that brain has mouldered into dust it is capable of reproducing the original ideas in a second brain where they may germinate and bear fruit. How familiar all this is, and yet how perennially wonderful! The miracle of it is sufficient excuse for this digression.

Now books, beside this modern form of distribution by loan, are widely distributed commercially both by loan and by sale, and especially in the latter form advertis.e.m.e.nt is now very extensively used in connection with the distribution. In fact we have all the different types specified above--economic, uneconomic and illegitimate, both through misrepresentation and the harmful character of the subject matter. The reason for all illegitimate forms of advertising is of course not a desire to misrepresent or to do harm per se, but to make money, the profit to the distributor being proportioned to the amount of distribution done and not at all dependent on its economic value. Distribution by public officers is of course not open to this objection, nor are the distributors subject to temptation, since their compensation does not depend on the amount of distribution. If they are capable and interested, furthermore, they are particularly desirous to increase the economic value of the work that they are doing. Since this is so and since the danger of uneconomic or harmful forms of advertising is thus reduced to a minimum, there would seem to be special reason why the economic forms should be employed very freely. But the fact is that they have been used sparingly, and by some librarians shunned altogether.

Let us see what library advertising of the economic types may mean. In the first place it means telling those who want books where they may get them.

This simple task is rarely performed completely or satisfactorily. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how many inhabitants of a large town do not even know where the public library is. Everyone realizes this who has ever tried to find a public library in a strange place. I once asked repeatedly of pa.s.sers-by in a crowded city street a block distant from a library (in this case not architecturally conspicuous) before finding one who knew its whereabouts; in another city I inquired in vain of a conductor who pa.s.sed the building every few hours in his car. In the latter case the library was a beautiful structure calculated to move the curiosity of a less stolid citizen. In New York inquiry would probably cause you to reach the nearest branch library, anything more remote than that being beyond the local intelligence. Sometimes I think we had better drop all our far-reaching plans for civic betterment and devote our time for a few years to causing citizens, lettered and unlettered alike to memorize some such simple formula as this: "There is a Public Library. It is on Blank street. We may borrow books there, free."

You will notice that I have inserted in this formula one item of information that pertains to use, not location. For of those who know of the existence and location of the Public Library there are many whose ideas of its contents and their uses, and of the conditions and value of such uses, are limited and crude. The advertising that succeeds in bettering this state of things is surely doing an economic service. All these things the self-respecting citizen should know. But beyond and above all this there is the final economic service of advertising--the causing a man to want that which he needs but does not yet desire. Every man, woman and child in every town and village needs books in some shape, degree, form or substance. And yet the proportion of those who desire them is yet outrageously small, though encouragingly on the increase. Here no memorizing of a formula, even could we compa.s.s it, could suffice. This kind of advertising means the realization of something lacking in a life.

Is the awakening of such a realization too much for us? Are we to stand by and see our neighbors all about us awakening to the undoubted fact that they need telephones in their houses, and electric runabouts, and mechanical fans in hot weather, and pianolas, and new kinds of breakfast food, while we despair of awakening them to their needs of books--quite as undoubted? Are we to admit that personal gain, which was the victorious motive that spurred on the commercial advertisers in these and countless other instances, is to be counted more mighty than the desire to do a service to our fellowmen and to fulfill the duties of our positions--which should spur us on?

I am not foolish enough to suppose that by placarding the fences with the words "Books! Books!" as the patent medicine man does with "Curoline!

Curoline!" we shall make any progress. The patent medicine man is right; he wants to excite curiosity and familiarize the public with the name of his nostrum. They all know what a book is--and alas the name is not even unknown and mysterious--would that it were! It calls up in many minds a.s.sociations which, if we are to be successful we must combat, overthrow, and replace by others. To many--sad it is to say it--a book is an abhorrent thing; to more still, it is a thing of absolute indifference. To some a book is merely a collection of things, having no ascertainable relations.h.i.+ps, that one is required to memorize; to others it is a collection of statements, difficult to understand, out of which the meaning must be extracted by hard study; to very few indeed does the book appear to be what it really is--a message from another mind. People will go to a seance and listen with thrills to the silliest stuff purporting to proceed from Plato or Daniel Webster or Abraham Lincoln, when in the Public Library, a few blocks away are important and authentic messages from those same persons, to which they have never given heed. Such a message derives interest and significance from circ.u.mstances outside itself. Very few books create their own atmosphere unaided. They presuppose a system of abilities, opinions, prejudices, likes and dislikes, intellectual connections and what not, that is little less than appalling, if we try to follow it up. Dislike of books or indifference toward them is often simply the result of a lack of these things or of some component part of them. We must supply what is lacking if we are to arouse a desire for books in those who do not yet possess it. I say that such a labor is difficult enough to interest him whose pleasure it is to essay hard tasks; it is n.o.ble enough to attract him who loves his fellow-man; success in it is rare enough and glorious enough to stimulate him who likes to succeed where others have failed. Advertising may be good or bad, n.o.ble or ign.o.ble, right or wrong, according to what is advertised and our methods of advertising it. He who would scorn to announce the curative powers of bottled spring-water and pink aniline dye; he who regards it as a commonplace task to urge upon the spendthrift public the purchase of unnecessary gloves and neckties, may well feel a thrill of satisfaction and of antic.i.p.ation in the task of advertising ideas and of persuading the unheeding citizen to appropriate what he has been accustomed to view with indifference.

To get at the root of the matter, let us inquire why it is that so many persons do not care for books. We may divide them, I think, into two cla.s.ses--those who do not care, or appear not to care for ideas at all, whether stored in books or not; and those who do care for ideas but who either do not easily get them out of storage or do not realize that they can be and are stored in books. Absolute carelessness of ideas is, it seems to me, rather apparent than real. It exists only in the idiot. There are those to be sure that care about a very limited range of ideas; but about some ideas they always care.

We must, in our advertis.e.m.e.nt of ideas, bear this in mind--the necessity of offering to each that which he considers it worth his while to take. If I were asked what is the most fundamentally interesting subject to all cla.s.ses, I should unhesitatingly reply "philosophy." Not, perhaps, the philosophy of the schools, but the individual philosophy that every man and woman has, and that is precisely alike in no two of us. I have heard a tiny boy, looking up suddenly from his play, ask "Why do we live?" This and its correlative "Why do we die?" Whence come we and whither do we go?

What is the universe and what are our relations to it--these questions in some form have occurred to everyone who thinks at all. They are discussed around the stove at the corner grocery, in the logging camp, on the ranch, in clubs and at boarding-house tables. Sometimes they take a theological turn--free will, the origin and purpose of evil, and so on. I do not purpose to give here a catalogue of the things in which an ordinary man is interested, and I have said this only to remind you that his interest may be vivid even in connection with subjects usually considered abstruse.

This interest in ideas we may call the library's raw material; anything that tends to create it, to broaden it, to extend it to new fields and to direct it into paths that are worth while is making it possible for the library to do better and wider work--is helping on its campaign of publicity. This establishes a web of connecting fibers between the library and all human activity. The man who is getting interested in his work, debaters at a labor union, students at school and college, the worker for civic reform, the poetic dreamer--all are creating a demand for ideas that makes it easier for the library to advertise them. Those who object to some of the outside work done by modern libraries should try to look at the whole matter from this standpoint. The library is taking its place as a public utility with other public utilities. Its relations with them are becoming more evident; the ties between them are growing stronger. As in all cases of such growth it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries between them, so fast and so thoroughly do the activities of each reach over these lines and interpenetrate those of the others. And unless there is actual wasteful duplication of work, we need not bother about our respective spheres. These activities are all human; they are mutually interesting and valuable. A library need be afraid of doing nothing that makes for the spread of interest in ideas, so long as it is not neglecting its own particular work of the collection, preservation and distribution of ideas as stored in books, and is not duplicating other's work wastefully.

When we observe those who are already interested in ideas, however, we find that not all are interested in them as they are stored up in books.

Some of these cannot read; their number is small with us and growing smaller; we may safely leave the schools to deal with them. Others can read, but they do not easily apprehend ideas through print. Some of these must read aloud so that they may get the sound of the words, before these really mean anything to them. These persons need practice in reading. They get it now largely through the newspapers, but their number is still large. A person in this condition may be intellectually somewhat advanced.

He may be able to discuss single-tax with some ac.u.men, for instance. It is a mistake to suppose that because a person understands a subject or likes a thing and is able to talk well about it, he will enjoy and appreciate a book on that subject or thing. It may be as difficult for him to get at the meat of it as if it were a half-understood foreign tongue. You who know enough French to buy a pair of gloves or sufficient German to inquire the way to the station, may tackle a novel in the original and realize at once the hazy degree of such a persons' apprehension. He may stick to it and become an easy reader, but on the other hand your well-meant publicity efforts may place in his hands a book that will simply discourage and ultimately repel him, sending him to join the army of those to whom no books appeal.

Next we find those who understand how to read and to read with ease, but to whom books--at any rate certain cla.s.ses of books--are not interesting.

Now interest in a subject may be so great that one will wade through the driest literature about it, but such interest belongs to the few--not to the many. I have come to the conclusion that more readers have had their interest killed or lessened by books than have had it aroused or stimulated. This is a proportion that it is our business as librarians to reverse. More of this unfortunate and heart-breaking, interest-killing work than I like to think of goes on in school. Not necessarily; for the name of those is legion who have had their eyes opened to the beauties of literature by good teachers. This makes it all the more maddening when we think how many poor teachers, or good teachers with mistaken methods, or indifferent teachers, have succeeded in a.s.sociating with books in the minds of their pupils simply burdensome tasks--the gloom and heaviness of life rather than its joy and lightness. Such boys and girls will no more touch a book after leaving school than you or I would touch a scorpion after one had stung us.

Perhaps it is useless to try to change this; possibly it is none of our business, though we have already seen that there are reasons to the contrary. But we can better matters, and we are daily bettering them, by our work with children. If a child has once learned to love books and to a.s.sociate them powerfully with something else than a burdensome task, then the labors of the unskillful teachers will create no dislike of the book but only of the teacher and his methods; while those of the good teacher will be a thousand times more fruitful than otherwise.

So much for the ways in which interesting books are sometimes made uninteresting. Now for the books that are uninteresting _per se_--and how many there are! When a man has something to distribute commercially for personal gain, the thing that he tries above all to do is to interest his public--to make them want what he has to sell. His success or failure in doing this, means the success or failure of his whole enterprise. He does not decide what kind of an entertainment his clients ought to attend and then try to make them go to it, or what kind of neckties they ought to wear and then try to make them wear them. Of ten promoters, if nine proceeded on this principle and one on the plan of offering something attractive and interesting, who would succeed? It is one of the marvels of all time that this never seems to have occurred to writers of books. We are almost forced to conclude that they do not care whether their volumes are read or not. In only one cla.s.s of books, as a rule, do the writers endeavor to interest the reader first and foremost; you all know that I refer to fiction. What is the result? The writers of fiction are the ones read by the public. More fiction is read, as you very well know, than all the other cla.s.ses of literature put together. The library that is able to show a fiction percentage of 60, points to it with pride, while there are plenty with percentages between 70 and 80. Now this is all to the credit of the fiction writers. I refuse to believe that their readers are any more fundamentally interested in the subjects of which they treat than in others. They simply follow the line of least resistance. They want something interesting to read and they know from experience where to go for it. Of course this brings on abuses. Writers use illegitimate methods to arouse interest--appeals perhaps, to unworthy instincts. We need not discuss that here, but simply focus our attention on the fact that writers of fiction always try to be interesting because they must; while writers of history, travel, biography and philosophy do not usually try, because they think it unnecessary. This is simply a survival. It used to be true that readers of these subjects read them because of their great antecedent interest in them--an interest so great that interesting methods of presentation became unnecessary. No one cared about the ma.s.ses, still less about what they might or might not read. Things are changed now; we are trying to advertise stored ideas to persons unfamiliar with them and we are suddenly awakening to the fact that our stock is not all that it should be. We need history, science and travel fascinatingly presented--at least as interestingly as the fiction-writer presents his subjects. This is by no means impossible, because it has been done, in a few instances.

We are by no means in the position of the Irishman who didn't know whether or not he could play the piano, because he had never tried. Some of our authors have tried--and succeeded. No one after William James can say that philosophy cannot be made interesting to the ordinary reader. Tyndall showed us long ago that physics could interest the unlearned, and there are similarly interesting writers on history and travel--more perhaps in these two cla.s.ses than any other. But it remains true that the vast majority of non-fiction books do not attract, and were not written with the aim of attracting, the ordinary reader such as the libraries are now trying to reach. The result is that the fiction writers are usurping the functions of these uninteresting scribes and are putting history, science, economics, biology, medicine--all sorts of subjects, into fictional form--a sufficient answer to any who may think that the subjects themselves, as distinguished from the manner in which they are presented, are calculated to repel the ordinary reader. Fiction is thus becoming, if it has not already become, the sole form of literary expression, so far as the ordinary reader is concerned. This is interesting; it justifies the large stock of fiction in public libraries and the large circulation of that stock. It does not follow that it is commendable or desirable. For one thing it places truth and falsehood precisely on the same plane. The science or the economics in a good novel may be bad and that in a poor novel may be good. Then again, it dilutes the interesting matter with triviality. It is right that those who want to know how and when and under what circ.u.mstances Edwin and Angelina concluded to get married should have an opportunity of doing so, but it is obviously unfair that the man who likes the political discussions put into the mouth of Edwin's uncle, or the clever descriptions of country-life incident to the courts.h.i.+p, should be burdened with information of this sort, in which he has little interest.

To those who are interested in the increase of non-fiction percentages I would therefore say: devise some means of working upon the authors. These gentry are yet ignorant of the existence of a special library public. Some day they will wake up, and then fiction will be relieved from the burden that oppresses it at present--of carrying most of the interesting philosophy, religion, history and social science, in addition to doing its own proper work.