Read by President Faunce of Brown University, at the
Narragansett Pier Conference of the American Library
Association in 1906. Elaborates the library's three gifts to
the nation--"knowledge, perspective and ideals."
William Herbert Perry Faunce was born in Worcester, Mass.,
Jan. 15, 1859, graduated at Brown University in 1880,
entered the Baptist ministry, and after holding several
pastorates became in 1899 president of his alma mater. He is
known as an effective writer and speaker, especially on
religion and education.
We have long been accustomed to speak of three great factors in modern
civilization--the school, the church, and the home. Must we, in view of
such a significant meeting as this, add a fourth factor--the library?
The modern library has in some places become a true school; in other
places it has radiated something of the refinement for which we once
looked to the home, and something of the idealism which is a peculiar
gift of the church. The library is vastly more than a collection of
books: it is a social, civilizing, moralizing force. We expect to find
the library building in every city and town as much as to find the spire
of the church or the flag of the schoolhouse. The visitor to Boston
to-day finds the public library as commanding a pile as Trinity Church,
and far more imposing than any schoolhouse. The visitor to New York
finds the new public library building climbing into a mass and dignity
as great as that of any cathedral. No smallest village is now complete
without its library, and when some future Goldsmith shall sing the
praise of another "Deserted village," he will point out not only with
the "noisy mansion" of the school-master, not only the church adorned
with the meek and unaffected grace of the rural pastor, but the loaded
shelves, the catalogs and reference lists, the chairs and tables, and
the zeal unaffected, though not always meek, of the modern librarian.
These libraries have sprung into being throughout the land without
specific legislation and without deliberate propaganda. The church
missionary societies of the country have adopted the avowed policy of
planting a church in every community, and appointing superintendents of
missions to see that this is done. Every state in the Union has its laws
for the establishment and maintenance of schools. But these multiplying
libraries have come into being without enactment of law or the preaching
of the crusade. They have spread from sea to sea by a happy contagion,
they have become a noble American epidemic. The great inarticulate
thirst for knowledge has demanded satisfaction, and created its own
supply. Our wisest directors of public sentiment and philanthropic
endeavor have realized that through the library may come a charity that
does not pauperize, a help that induces self-help, light to irradiate
the dark places of civilization, inspiration for every calling, and
access and power to every worthy institution and noble cause. What then
is the specific function of this new and powerful institution in modern
life? What is the contribution of the library to modern civilization?
The library makes to the nation three gifts: the gift of knowledge, the
gift of perspective, the gift of ideals. Putting the matter in another
way, we may say it gives us facts, relations, values.
The library is primarily to conserve and disseminate knowledge. Indeed,
the old conception of the library was purely that of a place of storage
for written or printed material. No one thought of taking out a book
from a mediaeval library any more than of removing a statue or painting
from an art gallery. And still to-day the function of the library as a
storehouse is most important. Modern democracy holds that knowledge is
not for a few bright minds of each generation, not for an intellectual
elite; but all that is knowable is to be made accessible to all that
desire to know. If we allow knowledge to come only to a chosen few of
each generation, how can we know that we have chosen the right ones to
receive it? The genius that might turn the stream of history may be born
in the lowliest cabin on the prairie, or in the darkest tenement of the
great city. There may not be a village Hampden in every village, but
there may be an Edison, a Fulton, an Eli Whitney, an Andrew Carnegie, a
Carl Schurz in any village in America. Only when we make knowledge
accessible to all shall we know what minds and hearts are among us.
But we must discriminate. The books which no longer convey knowledge,
which state theories no longer held, and propound as facts things no
longer believed; in other words, antiquated books of knowledge should be
sharply separated from books abreast of modern thinking. Those books
which have ceased to be of any use to mankind (except for antiquarian
purposes) or which never were of any use to mankind--and their name is
legion--have their place in a museum, but not in an working library. In
an arsenal we keep only weapons now serviceable in actual war, and
relegate flint-locks, catapults, and bows and arrows to the museum. No
arsenal in the world would be large enough to accommodate weapons for a
modern regiment mingled with all the weapons of all past generations. It
is time for some one to say frankly that there is no inherent sanctity
in paper and printer's ink. It may have been true in Milton's day that a
book was usually the precious life-blood of a master spirit; but to-day
a book is often the product of the least erected spirit that fell. An
almanac put forth to advertise some nostrum, or a novel prepared purely
as a piece of merchandise, does not acquire dignity or value simply
because bound in leather and placed on the shelf with "Paradise Lost."
We must apply to our libraries some higher standard than that of size.
We never estimate the Uffizzi or the Louvre by the number of paintings
they contain, yet we continue to grade modern libraries by the number of
volumes groaning on dust-covered shelves. A library of five thousand
well selected books may be of far more service than one of one hundred
thousand composed largely of books outgrown and forgotten. Our public
libraries must distinguish sharply between the library and the museum,
to the advantage of both.
Secondly: Perspective. The library aims to show us facts in their large
and permanent relations. There is no virtue in mere knowledge of facts
(any more than in vast numbers of volumes). Most facts are not worth
knowing, still less worth preserving. Doubtless the letter "p" occurs a
certain definite number of times in "Idylls of the King," and it may be
that some deluded mortal in prison or asylum has ascertained that
number; but we do not care to know that fact or have any one else know
it. The exact number of grains in some ant-hill is doubtless
discoverable, but only a lunatic would care for the discovery. Most
facts in nature and in history are in our present stage of development
without value. Only when these facts are collected, classified, seen in
relation, and translated into truth do they become of value to men.
For this reason the library must encourage, slow, patient, thoughtful
reading. We have long been told that a taste for reading is worth ten
thousand a year. Whether this is true or not depends altogether on what
sort of reading is referred to. The habit of letting the mind lie
passive while some scribbler plays upon it is not worth ten thousand a
year. The habit of letting the mind become a waste basket for sensation
and scandal is not worth ten thousand a year. The habit of reading as a
substitute for thinking is worth nothing, but is sheer damage to mental
fibre. The university library is even more important than the university
laboratory. In the laboratory we verify the theory which is far more
likely to be discovered in the library. The new discovery is a new
combination of old ideas, and such mental combination comes to us more
easily when we are dealing with thoughts than with things.
Our students need to use books not only as tools, but as friends. In the
old days, when the reading of college students was far more promiscuous
than to-day, they were accustomed to regard books almost as personal
acquaintances, and there was a genuine exchange of reaction of writer
and reader. Such reading was indeed very desultory, but, as our
professor of English literature is accustomed to say, "it was immensely
fattening." Now, on the other hand, the college student goes to the
library with a list of references, using many books, but becoming really
acquainted with none. He opens one work at volume 2, page 193, another
at volume 4, page 315, and, having extracted the precise bit of
information he desires, has no further use for the author in question.
This modern method of reading is far more accurate and definite than the
older method, and is obviously effective in securing results. But it
must be supplemented by the "browsing" of former days, by the large
horizons which come from being set free in the companionship of great
minds.
Thirdly: Ideals. Our libraries must not be only storehouses of
knowledge, but reservoirs of power. The great books of all time give us
contact with inspiring personalities, shining examples, with the great
leaders of men. The trophies of Themistocles will not suffer us to
sleep. When such books come into many a shut-in life, to many a boyhood,
cabined and confined, the limitations of the farm and factory are
forgotten, the mind expands to a kinship with past and future, and the
reader in some village library may become the prophet of the new
century, and the leader of the modern world.
More than that: the literature of power creates the climate in which we
live. It shapes our ideals of success, of power, of beauty, of goodness.
Fiction and poetry, if they thus create aspiration and give us
standards, may be more useful than all encyclopedias or text-books, for
they deal with the sources and the goal of all human action.