In the library where Lessing was made librarian—not that he might serve the library, but that the library might serve him—I took in my hand with reverence the inkstand out of which he distilled the essence of a thousand books, and reformed German literature as radically as Luther had reformed German religion.
All truths being inter-dependent, every road will lead to the end of the world, and so while studying one subject a man becomes interested in others, and his range of inquiry expands. When he kindles one dry stick, many green ones will catch, and his brightest blazes are lit up by unexpected sparks. One quickly learns to love hunting, and before working up many topics, he forms an investigating habit which will perpetuate itself. Thus while seeking an oyster, he finds a pearl, like Saul who sought asses and found a kingdom. Henceforth he reads more by subjects, each a cord to string pearls on, than by volumes, for he feels that,
“Unless to some particular end designed,
Reading is but a specious trifling of the mind,
And then, like ill-digested food,
To humors turns and not to blood.”
But less and less of that sort is his reading, though it range through all time, and tax all the world. Such an inquirer will live longer than Methuselah, for he will have more thoughts, yet he will wish each of his minutes was a millenary. He will read with an appetite growing as long as he lives; indeed reading will help him to live longer. A thousand such readers feel what one has spoken out, saying:
“In a library I was thrown, instead of worse society, into the company of poets, philosophers and sages—to me good angels and ministers of grace. From these silent instructors who often do more than fathers for our interests, from these delightful associates I learned something of the divine and more of the human religion. They were my interpreters in the House Beautiful of God, and my guides among the Delectable Mountains of Nature,
Blessing be with them and eternal praise,
Who gave me nobler loves and nobler cares.”
Pre-eminently to the young will the myriad-minded library be an oracle in perplexities. They have been better trained in public schools than we of the last generation were. They have broken ground in more various studies, and their curiosity has been stimulated concerning more questions. Each question, each study puts in their hand a new key to the locks which shut up libraries. Singers love to sing, and it is joy for the just to do justice, so will our youth rejoice to use in the library the skill they have acquired in school as naturally as when they get jack knives they take to whittling. The public schools then find in free libraries their fitting supplement, and complement. Schools without libraries feed a prisoner with salted viands and then tantalize his thirst with pitchers and bottles, all empty. The free school and the free library will join hands like husband and wife in a well-matched marriage.
“He is the half-part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him;
But two such silver currents when they join,
Do glorify the banks that bind them in.
Each befits the other, as Alexander said concerning the finest poem and the most costly casket in the world when he enshrined the Iliad in the Persian box of gold and gems. Both are lotteries where tickets cost nothing and everybody may draw all the prizes.
In addition to this, the free library will be to some nothing less than an inspiration. To some—I wish I could say to all, but alas, it is only an “elect few” whom the library can inspire. Spectacles are invaluable,—but only to those who have eyes. One Sultan never wore a shirt that had not every word of the Koran written on it yet absorbed little piety. Aaron's excuse for making only a golden calf was, that the Jews did not bring him gold enough to make an ox. The cherubim who know most can never equal the seraphim who love most. An ugly and stupid man, walking with a lady on each arm, boasts that he is between wit and beauty, but may not imbibe one particle of either.