y be
self-preservation. But, in any case, keeping up an interest in one's own
mind is excusable. Even the humblest man must admit that the first, the
most economical, the most humble, the most necessary thing for a man to
do in reading in this world (if he can do it) is to keep up an interest
in his own mind.

IV--Reading for Facts

I

Calling the Meeting to Order

Reading for persons makes a man a poet or artist, makes him dramatic
with his mind--puts the world-stage into him.

Reading for principles makes a man a philosopher. Reading for facts
makes a man----

"It doesn't make a man," spoke up the Mysterious Person.

"Oh, yes," I said, "if he reads a few of them--if he takes time to do
something with them--he can make a man out of them, if he wants to, as
well as anything else."

The great trouble with scientific people and others who are always
reading for facts is that they forget what facts are for. They use their
minds as museums. They are like Ole Bill Spear. They take you up into
their garret and point to a bushel-basketful of something and then to
another bushel-basket half-full of some more. Then they say in deep
tones and with solemn faces: "This is the largest collection of burnt
matches in the world."

It's what reading for facts brings a man to, generally--fact for fact's
sake. He lunges along for facts wherever he goes. He cannot stop. All an
outsider can do in such cases, with nine out of ten scientific or
collecting minds, is to watch them sadly in a dull, trance-like,
helpless inertia of facts, sliding on to Ignorance.

What seems to be most wanted in reading for facts in a world as large as
this is some reasonable principle of economy. The great problem of
reading for facts--travelling with one's mind--is the baggage problem.
To have every fact that one needs and to throw away every fact that one
can get along without, is the secret of having a comfortable and
practicable, live, happy mind in modern knowledge--a mind that gets
somewhere--that gets the hearts of things.

The best way to arrange this seems to be to have a sentinel in one's
mind in reading.

Every man finds in his intellectual life, sooner or later, that there
are certain orders and kinds of facts that have a way of coming to him
of their own accord and without being asked. He is half amused sometimes
and half annoyed by them. He has no particular use for them. He dotes on
them some, perhaps, pets them a little--