Another figure is an hydraulic image—the library as a reservoir—a reservoir of the world's refreshing, stimulating, energizing, fructifying influences. The librarian becomes a gate keeper and an irrigator. It is a beautiful thought, that you are letting out these fertilizing floods over the plains of human ignorance and stupidity. No wonder you think well of yourselves.
Then there is another that appealed to me this morning—you are a center of radioactivity, of intellectual and moral radioactivity, you are social and psychological physicists. The library as a center of psychic radioactivity strikes me as something satisfying, fascinating, delightful.
Another figure has appealed to my imagination. It is the library as an inn of books. Had you thought about that? Of course, you had—and that makes you hotel keepers. You see, being hotel keepers you would naturally be interested in all kinds of equipment; you would have the rooms prepared for your guests in the very best way, you would have a fireproof hotel, the rooms rather narrow, if you please, but plenty large enough and fairly well lighted and ventilated. The trouble is when you are running a big hotel to have the register carefully kept. You know, almost none of our best hotels can ever tell you whether a man is in or out. They are always uncertain about it, and in the old days before libraries and hotels became so efficient you could never be sure the clerk knew his business. You have changed all that, you are the most competent of hotel keepers and know how to build hotels and equip them. You furnish lobbies and parlors in which to meet guests, or if one likes he may take them home with him. I wish I had time to elaborate this idea of the Inn of Books. I am getting fond of it as the imagination plays with it. You can fancy Socrates coming in, looking about cautiously, with a certain apprehension, a little nervous for fear that she might be there. You can imagine him hanging about the corridors, listening to the gentlemen as they talk, coming up behind them, listening a little while, then saying in that calm way of his, that dangerously calm way, "I beg your pardon, but just what do you mean by 'progressive?' Precisely what significance do you give to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?'" Oh, it would be dreadful if Socrates were to come around and ask what we meant by the things we say. No wonder they gave him the hemlock cup. You couldn't permit him in your hotel. People would not understand him and would not associate with him in these days when we so much resent being asked to analyze and explain our automatic phrases.
You can see Horace coming in. He wouldn't be at all anxious to avoid the ladies. He would soon catch sight of the pretty stenographer. What pleasure he would take in dictating to her a clever ode. Yes, Horace would like the modern hotel. Then picture Pepys coming in, registering and then buying a yellow journal. How dismayed he would be! Pepys would have no chance whatever with Mr. Hearst. Then you can see the entrance of Lord Bacon. He would reveal his dual character, insist upon having the state suite all to himself, then hasten to discover how the electric lights and the elevator worked. You can image this sort of thing and can draw from it any analogy you please, but I have not time to do more than merely suggest it. It would make an admirable address for somebody who will be invited to address you next year.
I am not going to talk about these analogies, I am going to talk on the psychology of pictures. You know these are psychological days. We have now the psychology of almost everything. We have the psychology of infancy, the psychology of childhood, the psychology of adolescence and the psychology of senility; we have the psychology of advertising, we have the psychology of salesmanship—and we have Henry James. Therefore one need make no apology—in fact, one would apologise for not talking upon a psychological theme. I am going to try to see whether psychology has anything to say to librarians. Of course, it must have something to say. You are all psychologists. Anybody that knows how to give some one a book he does not want and make him think he likes it, is a psychologist. It is perfectly obvious that a psychological theme will be appropriate for a company like this.
When we try to describe what is going on in our minds we are immediately forced to use some sort of imagery, ideas made familiar in some other field. So when anybody reads psychological literature nowadays he is sure to come across the phrase "the threshold of consciousness." Here is a simple picture—a two-room house. One is the conscious room, the other is the unconscious room. There is a door between, and when an idea goes from the conscious to the unconscious room it goes over that threshold, and when it goes back it necessarily has to go over that threshold again. Then James has given us that fine figure, "the stream of consciousness." How good it is! Your thoughts and feelings flow on day after day and year after year like a stream. Practical questions arise at once. What sort of a stream of consciousness have I? Is the stream going steadily on, or is it rather like a babbling brook, making a pleasant murmur but with little power? Or like the River Platte, spreading out and disappearing in the sands of stupidity, or like a turgid stream, so muddy that it is almost impossible to see anything beneath the surface? Or is it a strong, clear, on-sweeping current to which new ideals and feelings are contributed day by day, so that as the years go on it becomes a mighty energy to turn the wheels of the world? A very good figure, and we may very well put such questions to ourselves.
Professor Cooley, of Michigan, has suggested another figure which I think would sufficiently antagonize Professor Macnaughton if he were here. Let us imagine a room, the walls and ceiling of which are incrusted thickly with incandescent lights. Near the door let us imagine a box containing a lot of switches. You turn on a switch and that immediately lights up a line across that wall, over the ceiling and down the other wall. You can stand there and turn on and off these switches and light up those circuits of electric lights at will. In similar fashion you have brain cells and these brain cells are like incandescent electric lights, the filaments of which connect with one another into circuits of association. When some one turns on a switch, by a visual image, or by an odor, or by a sound, there suddenly lights up in your mind one of these circuits of memory. When you look at the turrets of that beautiful Chateau Laurier, what do you see? Are you not in the valley of the Loire? Can't you see the frowning front of Chinon, the gracious facade of Asay-le-Rideau, the lacelike stairway of Blois, the massive turrets of Amboise? It is a fine thing to have one's mind well-wired, to have the circuits in good condition. A personal question you can put to yourself is "What sort of mental lights have I? Are they four candle power or thirty-two Tungsten? Are my switches in perfect working order, or are my circuits crossed, and fuses melted so that my mind is in semi or complete darkness?" This is a very practical way of applying these figures; and this address would be of no value if it did not now and then sound the homiletic note.
There is another figure to which I call your attention. It is the figure of the stereopticon lecture. We all go to stereopticon lectures. Many of us are fond of moving pictures. We may say we are not, we may take high ground, but we sneak in to see them. We all like pictures, we are like children in this regard; and when we go to a stereopticon lecture we know that no matter how stupid the lecturer may be, once in two minutes we are going to get a slide. The laws of physics work in our interests, for if the lecturer keeps a slide in the lantern longer than two minutes the heat is likely to break it. Therefore cupidity thwarts the passion for speech. We are all the while attending stereopticon lectures. We all have screens in our minds, and on these screens pictures are passing constantly. Our mental life can be described accurately and vividly in terms of these pictures, these slides of memory and imagination. Then, too, there is a spectator within us looking at the pictures, commenting upon them and having feelings about them. The character of the individual is revealed by the pictures he fondly holds on the screen of his mind. How curiously mental pictures are related to one another, and what strange slides some of them are! Let us examine them for a little.
In the first place, it is important to notice that some pictures are very vague. That means they are not well focused. You have been to a stereopticon lecture when the man could not work the lantern and when there were most unseemly altercations between the gentleman on the platform and the unfortunate person who was trying to run the lantern. It is bad enough to have the slides put in upside down; it is bad enough to have them start at the end of the lecture instead of the beginning; it is bad enough to have one of your favorite colored slides drop on the floor, but the worst thing is to have a slide so badly focused that you cannot tell what it is. Do you realize that in these mental panoramas, in these stereopticon exhibitions that we are attending, there are some pictures that are not well focused? Think of the ideas we have that are vague and hazy. Attention is the power which focuses pictures on the screen of the mind. You haven't possession of a picture until you can see it in its clear outlines. What a deal of vagueness there is in the world! How many ideas that, as a friend of mine says, "are fuzzy around the edges." The only mental picture that is to be trusted is the slide which is precise and clear and definite and accurately focused.