o seem to wish to claim this general gratefulness for
myself. I have no world-reforming feeling about the matter. I would be
very grateful just here to be allowed to tuck in a little idea--no chart
to go with it--on this general subject, which my mind keeps coming back
to, as it runs around watching people.

There seem to be but two ways of knowing. One of them is by the spirit
and the other is by the letter. The most reasonable principle of economy
in knowledge would seem to be, that in all reading that pertains to
man's specialty--his business in knowledge--he should read by the
letter, knowing the facts by observing them himself, and that in all
other reading he should read through the spirit of imagination--the
power of taking to one's self facts that have been observed by others.
If a man wants to be a specialist he must do his knowing like a
scientist; but if a scientist wants to be a man he must be a poet; he
must learn how to read like a poet; he must educate in himself the power
of absorbing immeasurable knowledge, the facts of which have been
approved and observed by others.

The weak point in our modern education seems to be that it has broken
altogether with the spirit or the imagination. Playing upon the spirit
or the imagination of a man is the one method possible to employ in
educating him in everything except his specialty. It is the one method
possible to employ in making even a powerful specialist of him; in
relating his specialty to other specialties; that is, in making either
him or his specialty worth while.

Inasmuch as it has been decreed that every man in modern life must be a
specialist, the fundamental problem that confronts modern education is,
How can a specialist be an educated man? There would seem to be but one
way a specialist can be an educated man. The only hope for a specialist
lies in his being allowed to have a soul (or whatever he chooses to call
it), a spirit or an imagination. If he has This, whatever it is, in one
way or another, he will find his way to every book he needs. He will
read all the books there are in his specialty. He will read all other
books through their backs.

IV

On Reading Books through Their Backs

As this is the only way the majority of books can be read by anybody,
one wonders why so little has been said about it.

Reading books through their backs is easily the most important part of a
man's outfit, if he wishes to be an educated man. It is not n