n which The
Educated are thrown away--the science-pit and the poet-pit. The area and
power and value of a man's knowledge depend upon his having such a
boundless interest in facts that he will avoid all facts he knows
already and go on to new ones. The rapidity of a man's education depends
upon his power to scent a duplicate fact afar off and to keep from
stopping and puttering with it. Is not one fact out of a thousand about
a truth as good as the other nine hundred and ninety-nine to enjoy it
with? If there were not any more truths or if there were not so many
more things to enjoy in this world than one had time for, it would be
different. It would be superficial, I admit, not to climb down into a
well and collect some more of the same facts about it, or not to crawl
under a stone somewhere and know what we know already--a little harder.
But as it is--well, it does seem to me that when a man has collected one
good, representative fact about a thing, or at most two, it is about
time to move on and enjoy some of the others. There is not a man living
dull enough, it seems to me, to make it worth while to do any other way.
There is not a man living who can afford, in a world made as this one
is, to know any more facts than he can help. Are not facts plenty enough
in the world? Are they not scattered everywhere? And there are not men
enough to go around. Let us take our one fact apiece and be off, and be
men with it. There is always one fact about everything which is the
spirit of all the rest, the fact a man was intended to know and to go on
his way rejoicing with. It may be superficial withal and merely
spiritual, but if there is anything worth while in this world to me, it
is not to miss any part of being a man in it that any other man has had.
I do not want to know what every man knows, but I do want to get the
best of what he knows and live every day with it. Oh, to take all
knowledge for one's province, to have rights with all facts, to be naive
and unashamed before the universe, to go forth fearlessly to know God in
it, to make the round of creation before one dies, to share all that has
been shared, to be all that is, to go about in space saying halloa to
one's soul in it, in the stars and in the flowers and in children's
faces, is not this to have lived,--that there should be nothing left out
in a man's life that all the world has had?

V--Reading for Results

I

The Blank Paper Frame of Mind

The P.