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,