fails by
attempting too much. One of the chief obstacles to its general use is
that it involves a too complicated notation. The many letters and figures
that indicate position on the shelves are difficult to remember in the
direct ratio of their number. The more minute the classification, the
more signs of location are required. When they become very numerous, in
any system of classification, the system breaks down by its own weight.
Library attendants consume an undue amount of time in learning it, and
library cataloguers and classifiers in affixing the requisite signs of
designation to the labels, the shelves, and the catalogues. Memory, too,
is unduly taxed to apply the system. While a superior memory may be found
equal to any task imposed upon it, average memories are not so fortunate.
The expert librarian, in whose accomplished head the whole world of
science and literature lies cooerdinated, so that he can apply his
classification unerringly to all the books in a vast library, must not
presume that unskilled assistants can do the same.

One of the mistakes made by the positivists in classification is the
claim that their favorite system can be applied to all libraries alike.
That this is a fallacy may be seen in an example or two. Take the case of
a large and comprehensive Botanical library, in which an exact scientific
distribution of the books may and should be made. It is classified not
only in the grand divisions, such as scientific and economic botany,
etc., but a close analytical treatment is extended over the whole
vegetable kingdom. Books treating of every plant are relegated to their
appropriate classes, genera, and species, until the whole library is
organised on a strictly scientific basis. But in the case, even of what
are called large libraries, so minute a classification would be not only
unnecessary, but even obstructive to prompt service of the books. And the
average town library, containing only a shelf or two of botanical works,
clearly has no use for such a classification. The attempt to impose a
universal law upon library arrangement, while the conditions of the
collections are endlessly varied, is foredoomed to failure.

The object of classification is to bring order out of confusion, and to
arrange the great mass of books in science and literature of which every
library is composed, so that those on related subjects should be as
nearly as possible brought together. Let us suppose a collection