What was to be the glorious goal of this cumulative progress? The Essayist's thoughts took on aërial daring. In the realm of knowledge, for example—what an inspiring vision! He had often thought of the pity of it—that scholars through the ages had consumed their lives in effort that was largely in vain: laboriously amassing the knowledge possessed by their predecessors, only to die and leave it as scant as when they had received it.
But that was in the olden time. Now, with the art of printing democratized, with specialization firmly established, with all the wonderful book-keeping and card-cataloguing that characterized intellectual activities, with the willingness of scholars to study and record everything, and of libraries to purchase and preserve everything, for fear of losing anything, with all the learning of the past immediately at hand, and with all the means and appliances available for its rapid utilization, why might scholarship not aspire to reach the absolute heights of knowledge? Might it not be possible now for the scholar to receive the torch of learning fully ablaze, and to run the race that was set before him without the necessity of stopping to renew or even trim it—for him to make, so to speak, more effective dashes at the pole of learning—or to build to the very heaven the intellectual Tower of Babel, whose downfall would not be so easily possible now as in an age when men had not been alive to the need of linguistic pigeon-holes?
But intellect was not the greatest thing in the world. Might not the ever increasing skill in pigeon-holing lead before long to a definition of religion, the cessation of doctrinal quarrels, and the sinking of all differences in a common ideal of administration, conduct, and even belief? Yes; might it not lead to the final obliteration of national and racial, and even social, distinctions? Might it not lead, and at no distant date, not only to democracy and social equality, but to universal democracy—when the war-drum throbbed no longer, etc.?
Having thus in imagination surveyed the glories of pigeon-holing, the Essayist seized upon his pen, and rapidly set his thoughts to paper, not omitting to make liberal use of the pigeon-holes before him whenever he adumbrated quotations with which he thought his page might be embellished.
The task finished, he glanced at the clock. The forenoon was only half spent. Looking over his sheets, too, he observed that his essay was only half the length an intelligent and good-natured reader ought to endure.
This was just as he would have it, for he had begun with the definite intention of appearing both for and against pigeon-holes. There was time enough left to make his work symmetrical by presenting the other side, and to append a conveniently stated conclusion. He knew from the editors that readers in general disliked nothing quite so much as being left to make up their own minds.
So he took up the pen again.
What! After all that rhapsodizing, not a believer in pigeon-holes?