te knowledge. Photography, gas, the locomotive,
kerosene, yes, every match that lights it, provokes questions in
chemistry, or philosophy, which not every library can answer. No one can
gaze at the dome of our Capitol without naturally falling into
architectural inquiries which draw him through a world of books that
expose the nakedness of his ignorance, yet never put him to open shame.
But the truth is too palpable to dwell on that in our day life touches
libraries at every point.

In all libraries there are readers whose emblem is dead fish who follow
the stream, but thanks to various accidents, some of this class, ceasing
to be passive recipients, begin to investigate as active seekers. They
at once rise to a higher mental plane. The contrast between active
seekers and passive recipients is analogous to that between the
mountaineers and the maritime aborigines of California. The mountaineers
lived on grizzly bears--food which it was impossible to seize without
tasking their energies to the utmost. But tasking trains. The maritimes
lived on salmon, which were so abundant and so tame that they could be
caught by fishers who lay basking in the sun. But basking enervates.
Naturally enough no Indians are superior to the mountaineers who are
active seekers, nor yet inferior to the maritimes, who are passive
recipients. What investigators seek they will not find at once; they may
never find it. But they are sure to discover something better, so that
they will say with LESSING, in the library at Wolfenbuttel, "Were God to
hold truth in one hand and search in the other, and give me my choice, I
would say: Give me seeking without finding, rather than finding without
seeking!"

"All things that are,
Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed."
Courtship once over, the novel ends.

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 l