particular to the way in which they may be furthered or made more
effective by books, especially by public collections of books.

When we think of any kind of training as it affects the individual, we
most naturally regard it as changing that individual, as making him more
fit, either for life in general or for some special form of life's
activities. But when we think of it as affecting a whole community or a
whole nation, we may regard it as essentially a selective process. In a
given community it is not only desirable that a certain number of men
should be trained to do a specified kind of work, but it is even more
desirable that these should be the men that are best fitted to do this
work. When Mr. Luther Burbank brings into play the selection by means of
which he achieves his remarkable results in plant breeding he gets rid of
the unfit by destruction, and as all are unfit for the moment that do not
advance the special end that he has in view, he burns up plants--new and
interesting varieties perhaps--by the hundred thousand. We cannot destroy
the unfit, nor do we desire to do so, for from the educational point of
view unfitness is merely bad adjustment. There is a place for every man in
the world and it is the educators business to see that he reaches it, if
not by formative, then by selective processes. This selection is badly
made in our present state of civilization. It depends to a large extent
upon circumstances remote from the training itself--upon caprice, either
that of the person to be trained or of his parents, upon accidents of
birth or situation, upon a thousand irrelevant things; but in every case
there are elements present in the training itself that aid in determining
it. A young man begins to study medicine, and he finds that his physical
repulsion for work in the dissecting-room can not be overcome. He abandons
the study and by doing so eliminates an unfit person. A boy who has no
head for figures enters a business college. He can not get his diploma,
and the community is spared one bad bookkeeper. Certainly in some
instances, possibly in all, technical and professional schools that are
noted for the excellence of their product are superior not so much because
they have better methods of training, but because their material is of
better quality, owing to selection exercised either purposely, or
automatically, or perhaps by some chance. The same is true of colleges. Of
two institutions with the same