ecessary to
prove this statement. The books themselves prove it without even being
opened. The mere outside of a library--almost any library--would seem to
settle the point that if a man proposes to be in any larger or deeper
sense a reader of books, the books must be read through their backs.

Even the man who is obliged to open books in order to read them sooner
or later admits this. He finds the few books he opens in the literal or
unseeing way do not make him see anything. They merely make him see that
he ought to have opened the others--that he must open the others; that
is, if he is to know anything. The next thing he sees is that he must
open all the others to know anything. When he comes to know this he may
be said to have reached what is called, by stretch of courtesy, a state
of mind. It is the scientific state of mind. Any man who has watched his
mind a little knows what this means. It is the first incipient symptom
in a mind that science is setting in.

The only possible cure for it is reading books through their backs. As
this scientific state of mind is the main obstacle nowadays in the way
of reading books through their backs, it is fitting, perhaps, at this
point that I should dwell on it a little.

I do not claim to be a scientist, and I have never--even in my worst
moments--hoped for a scientific mind. I am afraid I know as well as any
one who has read as far as this, in this book, that I cannot prove
anything. The book has at least proved that; but it does seem to me that
there are certain things that very much need to be said about the
scientific mind, in its general relation to knowledge. I would give the
world to be somebody else for awhile and say them--right here in the
middle of my book. But I know as well as any one, after all that has
passed, that if I say anything about the scientific mind nobody will
believe it. The best I can do is to say how I feel about the scientific
mind. "And what has that to do with it?" exclaims the whole world and
all its laboratories. What is really wanted in dealing with this matter
seems to be some person--some grave, superficial person--who will take
the scientific mind up scientifically, shake it and filter it, put it
under the microscope, stare at it with a telescope, stick the X-ray
through it, lay it on the operating table--show what is the matter with
it--even to itself. Anything that is said about the scientific mind
which is not said in a big, bow-wow,