The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Transcriber’s Note:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
A HANDBOOK CONTAINING SIXTY-SIX COURSES OF SYSTEMATIC STUDY OR OCCASIONAL READING
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA COMPANY, Limited
London
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA COMPANY
New York
Copyright in the United States of America, 1913,
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company
In your ordinary use of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you give your attention to the one article that will answer the one question you have in your mind. The aim of this Guide is to enable you to use the Britannica for an altogether different purpose, namely, for systematic study or occasional reading on any subject.
The volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica contain forty-four million words—as much matter as 440 books of the ordinary octavo size. And the subjects treated—in other words, the whole sum of human knowledge—may be divided into 289 separate classes, each one completely covering the field of some one art, science, industry or other department of knowledge. By the mere use of scissors and paste the alphabetical arrangement of the articles could be done away with, and the Britannica could be reshaped into 289 different books containing, on the average, about half as much again as an ordinary octavo volume. It would misrepresent the Britannica to say that you would then have 289 text-books , because there is an essential difference in tone and purpose. A text-book is really a book intended to be used under the direction and with the assistance of a teacher, who explains it and comments upon it. The Britannica, on the other hand, owes the position it has enjoyed since the first edition appeared in 1768 to the fact that it has succeeded, as no other book has succeeded, in teaching without the interposition of a teacher.
It is not, of course, claimed that the idea of reading certain groups of Britannica articles in the order in which they will combine themselves into complete books is a novel invention. Thousands of men owe the greater part of their educational equipment to a previous edition of the Britannica. And not only did they lay out their own courses of reading without the aid of such a Guide as this, but the material at their disposal was by no means so complete as is the 11th Edition. Every edition of the Britannica before this one, and every other book of comparable size previously published, appeared volume by volume. In the case of the last complete edition before the present, no less than 14 years elapsed between the publication of the first volume and the last. It is obvious that when editors have to deal with one volume at a time, and are unable to deal with the work as a whole, there cannot be that exact fitting of the edges of one article to the edges of another which is so conspicuously a merit of the 11th Edition. All the articles in this edition were completed before a single volume was printed, and the work stood, at one stage of its preparation, in precisely the form which, as has already been said, might be given to it by merely rearranging the articles according to their subjects.