CHAPTER IV
BOOKS AND THEIR EDUCATIVE USE
Many wise minds have written volumes and multitudes of wise essays on books and their use. For such learning we may refer directly to Bacon, Montaigne, Carlyle, Emerson, and the rest—at hand everywhere. But I wish to suggest, in connection with this matter of learning, that the choice of books, both of textbooks indirectly and of other kinds more directly, is a test, in itself, and a criterion in a way of our likelihood of becoming well educated—of our general educability. Nothing gets our range more quickly than our choice and use of books. Millionaires sometimes furnish the library of a new home with books bought by the linear shelf-yard and, next to their space, think most of their bindings. But, as they, perhaps, finally realize, there is no known subtle influence passing from an idea printed in a paragraph of a book to the subconscious mind of a near-by person how-
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