cks the weaving of these deeper
oracles of humanity, because they spake not of themselves, but for the
spirit of man. Nor need we fear that they will be smothered by their
interpretation. The mountains bear easily the weight of forests they
uprear, and at the last and highest, no tree ascends above the snow-line
of eternal thought.

But such ascents are as little the normal work of the university as of
the road-builder. Its course lies chiefly along the broad highways of
learning. Not books of power, but books of use, which sum first general,
and then special and professional knowledge, occupy the greater portion
of its time, just as the most saintly of mortals devotes more of his
days to earning his living than to saving his soul. If the study of
books of power is rendered more valuable by a library, the adequate
teaching of books of use without one is impossible. Every text-book is a
compromise between what is known and what can be taught. Two classes, I
know, the publishers and the public, cherish the belief that there are
text-books which sum current knowledge on this subject and that; but
there are none. Every text-book is out of date the day after it goes to
the printer, and the day before it gave out, not what is known, but the
view of what is known then in vogue. It measures the advancing tides of
learning by a gauge itself incessantly changing. We love to speak of
authorities and standards. We delude ourselves. The whole field of
letters and of learning is in a perpetual flux, whose only complete
record is the library. We know that in science discovery succeeds
discovery. There is nothing certain about a scientific book except that
it will be wrong in five or ten years. Only now and then does some
law-giver in science, some Newton or Darwin, descend the mount of
discovery, bearing eternal and lasting laws of nature, writ by Nature's
God. But in literature we dream of permanent reputation. Here, too,
"Every century gives the last the lie." All the lesser priests of
letters stand at shrines like that of Nemi and the Golden Bough,

"Beneath Aricia's trees,
Where the ghastly priest doeth reign,
The priest who slew the slayer
And shall himself be slain,"

Every new book enters the arena about to die. The friendly verdict but
deters fate; it does not avert it. The lesser criticism of letters must
be done anew for every crop of readers, and in fifteen or twenty years
most essays are left behind