sed,
men had to depend largely on their own stores. But now, what is the use
of books, if one is still to load one's memory with details? The
training of memory is a very unimportant part of education nowadays;
people with accurate memories are far too apt to trust them, and to
despise verification. Indeed, a well-filled memory is a great snare,
because it leads the possessor of it to believe, as I have said, that
knowledge is culture. A good digestion is more important to a man than
the possession of many sacks of corn; and what one ought rather to
cultivate nowadays is mental digestion.

June 14, 1889.

It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to abandon habits, and how
soon a new habit takes the place of the old. Some months ago I put
writing aside in despair, feeling that I was turning away from the most
stable thing in life; yet even now I have learned largely to acquiesce
in silence; the dreary and objectless mood visits me less and less
frequently. What have I found to fill the place of the old habit? I
have begun to read much more widely, and recognise how very
ill-educated I am. In my writing days, I used to read mainly for the
purposes of my books, or, if I turned aside to general reading at all,
it was to personal, intime, subjective books that I turned, books in
which one could see the development of character, analyse emotion,
acquire psychological experience; but now I find a growing interest in
sociological and historical ideas; a mist begins to roll away from my
mental horizon, and I realise how small was the circle in which I was
walking. I sometimes find myself hoping that this may mean the
possibility of a wider flight; but I do not, strange to say, care very
much about the prospect. Just at present, I appear to myself to have
been like a botanist walking in a great forest, looking out only for
small typical specimens of certain classes of ground-plants, without
any eyes for the luxurious vegetation, the beauty of the rich opening
glade, the fallen day of the dense underwood.

Then too I have begun to read regularly with the children; I did it
formerly, but only fitfully, and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But now
it has become a matter of intense interest to me, to see how thoughts
strike on eager and ingenuous minds. I find my trained imagination a
great help here, because it gives me the power of clothing a bare scene
with detail, and of giving vitality to an austere figure. I have made
al