to choose between them in selecting a profession, and a month
spent in a library where there were books on both subjects would certainly
operate to lessen his incompetence. Probably it would not be rash to
assert that with free access to books, under proper guidance, both before
and during a course of training, the persons who begin that course will
include more of the fit and those who finish it will include less of the
unfit, than without such access.

Let us consider one or two concrete examples. A college boy has the choice
of several different courses. He knows little of them, but thinks that one
will meet his needs. He elects it and finds too late that he is wasting
his time. Another boy, whose general reading has been sufficient to give
him some superficial knowledge of the subject-matter in all the courses,
sees clearly which will benefit him, and profits by that knowledge.

Again, a boy, full of the possibilities that would lead him to appreciate
the best in literature, has gained his knowledge of it from a teacher who
looks upon a literary masterpiece only as something to be dissected. The
student has been disgusted instead of inspired, and his whole life has
been deprived of one of the purest and most uplifting of all influences.
Had he been brought up in a library where he could make literary friends
and develop literary enthusiasms, his course with the dry as dust teacher
would have been only an unpleasant incident, instead of the wrecking of a
part of his intellectual life.

Still again, a boy on a farm has vague aspirations. He knows that he wants
a broader horizon, to get away from his cramped environment--that is about
all. How many boys, impelled by such feelings, have gone out into the
world with no clear idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they
really desire! To how many others has the companionship of a few books
meant the opening of a peep-hole, thru which, dimly perhaps, but none the
less really, have been descried definite possibilities, needs, and
opportunities!

To all of these youths books have been selective aids merely--they have
added little or nothing to the actual training whose extent and character
they have served to point out. Such cases, which it would be easy to
multiply, illustrate the value of books in the selective functions of
training. To assert that they exercise such a function is only another way
of saying that a mind orients itself by the widest contact with