Dr. VINCENT said, in opening his address, that he brought the greetings
of the National Education Association, being an "uninstructed
delegate," and he firmly believed "that with your tact, with your
boundless energy, with your irresistible enthusiasm, you will
ultimately sweep away into the vortex of your aggressive enterprise
even the school teachers of the United States and Canada."
Continuing Dr. Vincent said:
I find some difficulty in deciding just what analogy I shall use this
evening. This is a subject which has exhausted almost all the forms
of metaphor, simile and analogy. Librarians have been likened to
almost everything under the sun. There are three metaphors which have
survived from the old days. You are all familiar with these. You use
them ironically, to describe that condition of affairs which prevailed
in libraries before you supplanted those archaic people who used so
thoroughly to misinterpret the functions of the librarian.
One is the analogy of the museum, the library as a museum of books, a
museum carefully guarded, a museum to which the public is not to be
admitted except under conditions which make resort to the place so
irksome that only a few persist. You remember the old story of the man
in Philadelphia who had committed a crime. To escape detection and go
where nobody would look for him, he resorted to the reading room of the
Philadelphia library.
Then there is the other analogy--I do not know that this has been, so
far, insisted upon, but it is a very good one, it seems to me--the
analogy of the penitentiary of books, with the librarian as a jailer.
Just why these people should have been put in prison as they were in
the old days, just why their friends should not be permitted to visit
them, it is hard to say. This is akin to another analogy, the library
as a mausoleum of books, a place where books are buried, and the
librarian is a bibliotaph.
These old analogies, these figures of another day, serve pleasantly
to flatter a little your complacency over things as they are. But we
have no time to devote to the dead past. Let us consider some of the
analogies which are still living. I have been a little bewildered by
that analogy this morning, the maple leaf and the gavel. I have not
been quite able to work it out. It seems to me, with all deference
to the delightfully poetic figure, which took everybody by storm,
including myself, it is a mistake to try to analyze these sentiments.
There was something about preserving the light in the maple leaves
and the leaves of the book. Now, as a matter of fact, leaves are put
away in a library very much as they are in an herbarium. There is no
botanical relation to the trunk of a tree after they have been folded
and put away. So I don't see how that works out--but that doesn't make
any difference. An analogy never goes on four legs. This one just
happened to have about two and a half feet upon the ground. But that
is Mrs. Elmendorf's analogy; I propose to leave it alone. There may
be an explosive possibility about it which she will explain some time
when she has a chance to work it out. She had very short notice and she
did it beautifully, and I know so little about botany that it gave me
practically no intellectual difficulty.
Then there is the analogy that we are all very fond of, the analogy
of the library as a department store. There you have your efficient
business manager. The library is a place where it is no trouble to
show goods, where you have your various departments and the goods are
up to date; where you have all sorts of advertising methods, where you
advertise in the daily papers, send out bulletins, get up circulars
and posters and attract attention by illustrations, where you have
an elevator and all that sort of thing. Just think of the sacrifice
that librarians are making, the mere pittances they are receiving,
when they might be running these great emporia in our large cities.
The department store offers a good analogy if you do not press it too
far. There is not very much money in the business. It doesn't pay very
well in dollars and cents, but think of the intellectual advantages it
offers, the psychic dividends that a business of that sort pays!
Then there is a figure I worked out myself a while ago, the library
as a social memory. That seems to me capital. I think, so far as I
know, I have a copyright on that figure. It was a good address, by the
way, in which I used this trope. I wish I had remembered it; I should
have brought it along and read it to-night instead of making this
carefully set address. Yes, the social memory idea is a good analogy.
It reduces the librarian to a medulla oblongata, so far as I am able to
understand the psychology of the situation. Yet that is an honorable
function, although largely automatic. It is a good thing to control the
resources of the social memory, to be able to put these at the service
of the public mind--decidedly a fruitful analogy, but I do not care to
elaborate it this evening.
Another figure is an hydraulic image--the library as a reservoir--a
reservoir of the world's refreshing, stimulating, energizing,
fructifying influences. The librarian becomes a gate keeper and an
irrigator. It is a beautiful thought, that you are letting out these
fertilizing floods over the plains of human ignorance and stupidity. No
wonder you think well of yourselves.
Then there is another that appealed to me this morning--you are a
center of radioactivity, of intellectual and moral radioactivity, you
are social and psychological physicists. The library as a center of
psychic radioactivity strikes me as something satisfying, fascinating,
delightful.
Another figure has appealed to my imagination. It is the library as
an inn of books. Had you thought about that? Of course, you had--and
that makes you hotel keepers. You see, being hotel keepers you would
naturally be interested in all kinds of equipment; you would have the
rooms prepared for your guests in the very best way, you would have a
fireproof hotel, the rooms rather narrow, if you please, but plenty
large enough and fairly well lighted and ventilated. The trouble is
when you are running a big hotel to have the register carefully kept.
You know, almost none of our best hotels can ever tell you whether a
man is in or out. They are always uncertain about it, and in the old
days before libraries and hotels became so efficient you could never be
sure the clerk knew his business. You have changed all that, you are
the most competent of hotel keepers and know how to build hotels and
equip them. You furnish lobbies and parlors in which to meet guests,
or if one likes he may take them home with him. I wish I had time to
elaborate this idea of the Inn of Books. I am getting fond of it as the
imagination plays with it. You can fancy Socrates coming in, looking
about cautiously, with a certain apprehension, a little nervous for
fear that _she_ might be there. You can imagine him hanging about the
corridors, listening to the gentlemen as they talk, coming up behind
them, listening a little while, then saying in that calm way of his,
that dangerously calm way, "I beg your pardon, but just what do you
mean by 'progressive?' Precisely what significance do you give to
'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?'" Oh, it would be dreadful
if Socrates were to come around and ask what we meant by the things we
say. No wonder they gave him the hemlock cup. You couldn't permit him
in your hotel. People would not understand him and would not associate
with him in these days when we so much resent being asked to analyze
and explain our automatic phrases.
You can see Horace coming in. He wouldn't be at all anxious to avoid
the ladies. He would soon catch sight of the pretty stenographer. What
pleasure he would take in dictating to her a clever ode. Yes, Horace
would like the modern hotel. Then picture Pepys coming in, registering
and then buying a yellow journal. How dismayed he would be! Pepys
would have no chance whatever with Mr. Hearst. Then you can see the
entrance of Lord Bacon. He would reveal his dual character, insist upon
having the state suite all to himself, then hasten to discover how the
electric lights and the elevator worked. You can image this sort of
thing and can draw from it any analogy you please, but I have not time
to do more than merely suggest it. It would make an admirable address
for somebody who will be invited to address you next year.
I am not going to talk about these analogies, I am going to talk on
the psychology of pictures. You know these are psychological days. We
have now the psychology of almost everything. We have the psychology of
infancy, the psychology of childhood, the psychology of adolescence and
the psychology of senility; we have the psychology of advertising, we
have the psychology of salesmanship--and we have Henry James. Therefore
one need make no apology--in fact, one would apologise for not talking
upon a psychological theme. I am going to try to see whether psychology
has anything to say to librarians. Of course, it must have something
to say. You are all psychologists. Anybody that knows how to give
some one a book he does not want and make him think he likes it, is a
psychologist. It is perfectly obvious that a psychological theme will
be appropriate for a company like this.
When we try to describe what is going on in our minds we are
immediately forced to use some sort of imagery, ideas made familiar
in some other field. So when anybody reads psychological literature
nowadays he is sure to come across the phrase "the threshold of
consciousness." Here is a simple picture--a two-room house. One is the
conscious room, the other is the unconscious room. There is a door
between, and when an idea goes from the conscious to the unconscious
room it goes over that threshold, and when it goes back it necessarily
has to go over that threshold again. Then James has given us that
fine figure, "the stream of consciousness." How good it is! Your
thoughts and feelings flow on day after day and year after year like
a stream. Practical questions arise at once. What sort of a stream
of consciousness have I? Is the stream going steadily on, or is it
rather like a babbling brook, making a pleasant murmur but with little
power? Or like the River Platte, spreading out and disappearing in
the sands of stupidity, or like a turgid stream, so muddy that it is
almost impossible to see anything beneath the surface? Or is it a
strong, clear, on-sweeping current to which new ideals and feelings are
contributed day by day, so that as the years go on it becomes a mighty
energy to turn the wheels of the world? A very good figure, and we may
very well put such questions to ourselves.
Professor Cooley, of Michigan, has suggested another figure which
I think would sufficiently antagonize Professor Macnaughton if he
were here. Let us imagine a room, the walls and ceiling of which are
incrusted thickly with incandescent lights. Near the door let us
imagine a box containing a lot of switches. You turn on a switch and
that immediately lights up a line across that wall, over the ceiling
and down the other wall. You can stand there and turn on and off these
switches and light up those circuits of electric lights at will. In
similar fashion you have brain cells and these brain cells are like
incandescent electric lights, the filaments of which connect with one
another into circuits of association. When some one turns on a switch,
by a visual image, or by an odor, or by a sound, there suddenly lights
up in your mind one of these circuits of memory. When you look at the
turrets of that beautiful Chateau Laurier, what do you see? Are you not
in the valley of the Loire? Can't you see the frowning front of Chinon,
the gracious facade of Asay-le-Rideau, the lacelike stairway of Blois,
the massive turrets of Amboise? It is a fine thing to have one's mind
well-wired, to have the circuits in good condition. A personal question
you can put to yourself is "What sort of mental lights have I? Are they
four candle power or thirty-two Tungsten? Are my switches in perfect
working order, or are my circuits crossed, and fuses melted so that my
mind is in semi or complete darkness?" This is a very practical way of
applying these figures; and this address would be of no value if it did
not now and then sound the homiletic note.
There is another figure to which I call your attention. It is the
figure of the stereopticon lecture. We all go to stereopticon lectures.
Many of us are fond of moving pictures. We may say we are not, we may
take high ground, but we sneak in to see them. We all like pictures,
we are like children in this regard; and when we go to a stereopticon
lecture we know that no matter how stupid the lecturer may be, once
in two minutes we are going to get a slide. The laws of physics work
in our interests, for if the lecturer keeps a slide in the lantern
longer than two minutes the heat is likely to break it. Therefore
cupidity thwarts the passion for speech. We are all the while attending
stereopticon lectures. We all have screens in our minds, and on these
screens pictures are passing constantly. Our mental life can be
described accurately and vividly in terms of these pictures, these
slides of memory and imagination. Then, too, there is a spectator
within us looking at the pictures, commenting upon them and having
feelings about them. The character of the individual is revealed by
the pictures he fondly holds on the screen of his mind. How curiously
mental pictures are related to one another, and what strange slides
some of them are! Let us examine them for a little.
In the first place, it is important to notice that some pictures are
very vague. That means they are not well focused. You have been to
a stereopticon lecture when the man could not work the lantern and
when there were most unseemly altercations between the gentleman on
the platform and the unfortunate person who was trying to run the
lantern. It is bad enough to have the slides put in upside down; it
is bad enough to have them start at the end of the lecture instead of
the beginning; it is bad enough to have one of your favorite colored
slides drop on the floor, but the worst thing is to have a slide so
badly focused that you cannot tell what it is. Do you realize that in
these mental panoramas, in these stereopticon exhibitions that we are
attending, there are some pictures that are not well focused? Think of
the ideas we have that are vague and hazy. Attention is the power which
focuses pictures on the screen of the mind. You haven't possession of
a picture until you can see it in its clear outlines. What a deal of
vagueness there is in the world! How many ideas that, as a friend of
mine says, "are fuzzy around the edges." The only mental picture that
is to be trusted is the slide which is precise and clear and definite
and accurately focused.
Then another thing to note about these pictures is the way in which
they are related to one another. We may have a passive or an active
attitude toward the show that is going on. When you are in a passive
condition, you know how oddly these pictures come on, what an absurd
relation sometimes they have to one another. They seem to have no
logical connection whatever. Some pictures always appear together,
although they may have no connection except that they were originally
associated in that way, and you can never get one of them without
the other turning up. It is amusing, sometimes grotesque, sometimes
absurd, the way these pictures are grouped. Some come in what we call
a logical series; that is, they have some connection with one another,
one brings up another, and you go through the series from one point to
another. Oh, how promiscuously these pictures come on the screen of
the mind, some without the slightest premonition of their coming. It
is fascinating to recall the process by which one picture suggested
another, and that one a third. At times the spectator within us takes
control and says, "I won't have that picture any longer, I will
have another." He has the power to summon pictures. There lies the
control. If there be in this world anything like self-control, that
self-control is in the control of mental imagery. That control is the
secret of personality. In terms of mental imagery can we define the
individual and his power over himself, for mental pictures control our
lives. Habit is merely a mental picture which has become automatic.
Just because you can do the thing although you are conscious of the
picture no longer, it does not mean that that image was not there
once. When I want you to do something, I tell you to do it. If I have
authority over you I put the picture of that act in your mind and I
hold it there until it has worked itself out in conduct. Of course,
I should not go about it in that way, with you, as an association of
librarians. Not at all. I should attempt it in quite another way.
I should sneak the picture into your mind by what we call indirect
suggestion. If you were somebody I could browbeat into doing what I
told you to do, I could order you to do it. In other words, I could
jam the picture right into your mind, hold it there and say, "Now, you
do that thing." But, with you, I couldn't do it that way. But I think
I could manage some of you at any rate. When you were not watching,
I should slip the picture into your mind. You wouldn't know where it
came from. It would come on naturally. You would think you thought of
it yourself. That is the gentle art of suggestion, to slip a picture
on the screen of a person's mind without letting him know how it got
there. He naturally, then, supposes it is the result of those deceptive
processes which he identifies with personal thinking. You cannot cram
ideas down the throat of a free-born American citizen. Of course, you
can't. Moreover, what is the use of cramming them down his throat when
you can squirt them into him with a psychological hypodermic? That is
the charming thing about suggestion. All control, then, is control
through mental imagery. You have had this experience, for example. As
you stood in a railroad station and a locomotive came thundering in,
you have had, for a moment, an impulse--not only an impulse,--you have
had the picture in your mind of throwing yourself under the locomotive.
From a casual inspection of the company I should suppose that none had
tried that experiment as yet. Why? Because you were able to remove that
picture from your mind and substitute for it another--a picture of the
presumable appearance of things in a very short time after you had made
the experiment, or the vista of a long and happy life stretching out
before you, or of obligations to family and friends. Any one of these
pictures will serve the purpose. But if the time ever comes when that
picture of going under that locomotive gets firmly fixed in your mind,
nothing except physical force from without can prevent your going under
the wheels. Every motor idea that comes into our minds tends to work
itself out into action. That is the secret of the hypnotic sleep, in
which the person who is under your control, through pictures produced
in his mind, automatically carries these things out into action. Mental
imagery is the secret of life, and control of mental imagery means the
control of mankind. Self-control is the control of one's own imagery.
The personality, the self, is revealed in this imagery and in the
attitude of the spectator within us. You know those different
attitudes. There are some pictures that come upon the screen of
your mind, and the spectator within you is immediately interested.
For example, here comes a picture on the screen of your mind of the
day when that board that you had been working with so long, that
unintelligent board, that board made up of reactionary people that
you had so long been nursing, came to the point where you were able
to tell them of that scheme of yours which must inevitably, logically
and remorselessly lead to putting the library in your community on a
modern basis. When the picture of your triumph on that occasion comes
upon the screen of your mind, the spectator within you claps her hands
and says: "You were very clever about that; you waited a long time,
you worked it skillfully, you certainly are a capable person." You all
get pictures of that kind. You can't help looking at them. Here is
another slide--a reception. Of course, when they said that yours was
an extremely becoming gown, you were quite delighted; and you talked
well; you did say a lot of brilliant things. To be sure they were not
original--nobody expects that--but you were very fortunate in your
anthology that afternoon. I can see by the broad and amiable smiles all
of you are wearing, that pictures of a similarly agreeable kind are by
suggestion appearing on the screens of your minds.
But you have pictures of a very different sort. How could you?--of
course, you were just from the library school, it was only your first
position, but, at the same time, how could you?--you cannot imagine how
you could have mistaken Sir Thomas More, in the sixteenth, for Thomas
Moore in the nineteenth century. How could you have done it? Yet you
did. When that picture comes on the screen of your mind the spectator
within you shrinks and says: "Why must we look at that? Take it off at
once." It would be very piquant if I could take other illustrations
from your own experience, but I cannot do that. I shall have to take
one out of mine. I have a number which my spectator dislikes. Here is a
recent one:
At our experimental farm we have a very beautiful new saddle horse.
As I pretend to be something of a rider I went to ride this horse.
There was a sort of celebration that afternoon, and I thought it would
be pleasant for the president of the University to ride one of these
blooded horses to give _eclat_ to the =affair=. I went out and rode
this mare about. Everything went well until I encountered several
traction engines in active operation and a number of automobiles. I
was in a very narrow place. There being almost no other direction
for the mare to go, she began to take a vertical course. She was in
good condition and rather rotund, and the laws of physics worked out
their inevitable result. At forty-five degrees I held on admirably. At
sixty-five degrees, I began to feel some little distress. At eighty
degrees I looked behind me, and at 89-1/2 degrees I slid off. Now, such
is the admirable press organization in the great state of Minnesota
that every newspaper, I think, in the commonwealth--I haven't found
one yet that skipped the item--called attention to the fact that the
president of the University had come a cropper--or, if not strictly
a cropper, the effect of it was the same. One of the papers was kind
enough to say that, being an expert rider, I landed on my feet. If I
did, my fundamental ideas of anatomy have been entirely erroneous. As
I have been traveling about the state in the last few weeks, I haven't
met a man, woman or child who has not sooner or later worked that
back-sliding into the conversation. This is a picture of which, when
it comes on the screen of my mind, the spectator within me says, "I
suppose we have got to stand this, but it is certainly getting to be
slightly tiresome." We all get slides of that sort in our collection.
Then there are pictures of another sort, beautiful pictures, inspiring
pictures, yet for some reason the spectator within us is left cold and
unaffected by these images. It is the very tragedy of human nature that
we may intellectually know beautiful, noble, inspiring things, may
have uplifting visions, and yet the spectator within us may look at
these things and never so much as feel a flutter of the pulse. We do
not incorporate ideas until these things have become not only a part
of our intellectual apprehension, but until they have become a part
of our emotional nature, until we make them into the very fabric of
ourselves. We define the self, therefore, in terms of mental pictures,
and the control of self is the control of mental pictures. Let me know
the pictures to which you constantly revert, let me know the pictures
that come steadily to the screen of your mind, let me know the pictures
that the spectator within you gloats over and feels a loyalty to, and
I will reveal to you your character. Whatsoever a man thinketh in his
heart, whatsoever pictures he makes his own, whatsoever pictures he
gloats over with joy and satisfaction, these things reveal the true
personality.
Consider another thing: the content of these pictures, the kind of
pictures. How are they determined? They are determined by our social
relationships. Do you think the same sort of pictures are in the mind
of the Englishman as are in the mind of the American? Do you think the
same kind of pictures come into the mind of the Frenchman as come into
the mind of the German? There are certain universal pictures, the same
for all educated people, but most pictures take on a group character.
What are the pictures that come into your minds as librarians? Pictures
of your active calling. These pictures are very definite. You have
your own phrases, your own language. These phrases and these forms
of speech are themselves the labels of mental imagery. Every social
group is held together by its phrases. Oh, how we love these phrases
and how glibly we repeat them! So too, college professors have their
own phrases. What a sesquipedalian terminology it is with which they
bewilder the lay mind and overpower the student! How would lawyers get
on but for their monopoly of archaic forms of speech? Think of the
doctors' terminations, so many of them fatal, in _itis_, which they
have invented in the last few years. So every social group determines
very largely the conduct of its members by cleverly putting into their
minds the imagery that it wishes to have carried out. Why do you dress
as you do? Do your clothes represent your individual taste? In some
measure, but for the most part you dress as you do because society puts
fashion pictures into your heads. You ladies dress as you do because
these fashion plates and the women you see upon the street leave a
deposit in your mind, a composite picture, and that composite picture
works itself out in your own charming and becoming wardrobe. To be
sure, as librarians, you have individuality; as librarians, you have a
certain personal distinction, but it is, after all, only a variation
upon the common modes which you share with all your sisters everywhere.
These standards, these ideals, these types, that we talk about are put
into our minds by the social groups of which we are members, and we are
to a very large extent dominated by these pictures. Do you doubt it?
Just examine your mental imagery. How much of that mental imagery have
you secured as a result of your own first hand experience? How much
of that mental imagery represents original thinking? How much of that
psychic panorama have you received ready-made from the society to which
you belong?
The pictures come quickly upon the screen of the mind. How readily they
are summoned by suggestion! If I had time I could bore you almost to
extinction by calling up in your minds images that are common to all
of us. We all have large collections of slides. The depressing fact
is that for the most part they are identical. How refreshing it is to
meet an original person. Who is the original person? Just the person
that has some slides that were made at home. Most of us have the same
old, tiresome slides. When we have to make conversation, what do we
do? Go to the pigeon-hole, take out a slide, put it into our minds and
then reflect it to our friends. We have to be able to talk on a great
variety of subjects. In the nature of things we could not think out
these things for ourselves. Society has provided the slides. There they
are, like a well-organized collection, a card catalog, with a topical
index. To suppose that we make the slides ourselves is a grateful
illusion. There may be a few who do, but most of us get ours from the
stock houses in New York and Chicago.
Was there ever a time when pictorial imagery was presented to the
public as in these days? These are the days when people's minds are
filled with visual imagery as never before in the history of mankind.
And never before was the same imagery spread over so wide an area.
Think, for example, of what cartoons do. Cartoons are a substitute
for thinking. Cartoons are ready-made slides. Cartoons are arguments
ready to serve. Cartoons demand no intellectual effort. They would
not be successful as cartoons if they did. A cartoon which you have
to analyze is in the nature of things a mistake and a disappointment.
A cartoon tells the story instantly. It is a slide put into the minds
of millions of people in a single week. Then consider the imagery sent
out by the illustrated magazines. There is only one magazine, I think,
now, that does not have illustrations. Some of us take it just for that
reason. It has a kind of distinction on that account. The _Atlantic
Monthly_ has no illustrations except in the advertising pages--some of
those are very good--but it has that sense of uniqueness, that kind
of snobbishness, which is appreciated even in a democracy like our
glorious democracy, where we are all free and equal, as contrasted
with the social distinctions of this monarchy under which we are so
hospitably received this evening. It is a mistake to suppose that the
visual is suggested merely by drawings and photographs. When we go to a
lecture on "Mother, Home and Heaven" we expect the speaker in lieu of
lantern slides to supply "word pictures." The Sunday supplement is the
absolute symbol of our state of mind.
As we haven't time to think--i. e., to make our own slides--naturally
we haven't time to bring our collection together to see whether it is
consistent. We are going about with a most extraordinary selection
of slides. The only reason we get along with peace of mind is that
we do not take our slides out of the different boxes at the same
time. You keep your religious slides in one box, your moral slides in
another, your business slides in another, your professional slides in
another--and never take anything out of two pigeon-holes at once. For
that reason you go through life without knowing what an extraordinary
collection of hopelessly contradictory and mutually destructive ideas
you are carrying about under that hat of yours. It is only by keeping
these things in their boxes that we have anything like peace of mind.
A few people, of course, are constantly going through their boxes,
sifting, reorganizing and unifying their collections. These are the
men and women who think, who have courage, and for the most part they
represent genuine leadership. But most of us are satisfied to get our
slides ready made, to get them in quantities and to have them remain a
most heterogeneous accumulation.
There is a vast popular demand for ready-made slides. In every possible
way these substitutes for thought are being sent out. Political slides
are industriously distributed. You notice the difficulty that you have
just now in talking about the political situation in our glorious
country. We do not yet know what to say. You see, the slides haven't
yet been sent out for this week. We have to wait until the slide makers
put them on the market. We are all waiting to know what to say; we are
all waiting for a new set of slides which shall be adjusted to the new
conditions. If you bring out that old slide about the Republican party
that saved the country--No! You don't want to say anything about that.
You see at once, even though it has saved the country for years--you
can see that that slide won't do. It is cracked.
Pardon a digression which enforces the point that in these days
everything has to be pictorial. You see, when I am addressing a
group of librarians in a jaded condition, I have to use pictorial
illustrations. It is true, I should like to be didactic and pedagogic
on an occasion like this, but you are in a psychological condition
which makes it absolutely impossible. Even the thought of listening to
these songs that are coming afterward, would not keep you if I were not
constantly pictorial and keeping your minds filled with this beguiling
imagery.
Imagery, then, is absolutely essential; self-control and social control
are dependent upon the distribution of appropriate mental slides.
The very life of the nation depends upon this. Here we are, nearly a
hundred million people--we always include children--whose slides must
be supplied and in some fashion unified. The imagination breaks down
at the thought of this vast task. This national like-mindedness is a
glorious achievement. It has never been equaled anywhere on the face
of the earth. To keep these millions of people, who are scattered over
three million square miles, with the same fundamental pictures in their
heads is a marvelous triumph.
That we are the most progressive, the most mighty, the most highly
civilized country on the face of the world--that is a gorgeous
colored slide, which we keep on hand all the time. There are a lot of
slides like that, that are common to everybody. True, we have slides
specialized for the use of various social groups, but the fundamental
slides that preserve our nationality, are common to millions.
We have to have institutions that keep these slides vivid in the minds
of our people. It is the greatest attempt at social control that has
ever been conceived.
But the national slide industry is by no means perfected. On the
whole, there is an appalling number of these pictures that are vulgar
slides, cheap slides, commonplace slides, uninteresting slides. It is
your business--for now I come to my analogy--it is your business, as
the people who are running the moving-picture concerns of the United
States, to see to it that better pictures are put into the minds of
your fellow citizens. You have the responsibility of superseding in
the mental collections of millions of our citizens slides that are
cheap and unworthy and inaccurate and misleading, with mental pictures
that are clean-cut, trustworthy, informing and inspiring. That is
your business. You are in competition with the moving-picture houses.
There are nine thousand of these moving-picture concerns working night
and day in the United States, filling the minds of people with mental
imagery. But every library is full of potential mental pictures which
can be made interesting, ennobling and uplifting to millions of people.
It is your privilege to get these slides out into circulation, a mighty
appealing thing to do, a splendidly stirring thing to do. I hope you
are thoroughly alert as members of this mental picture syndicate. You
know what you have to do. You must advertise and you must capture
the public in every possible way; you must not be ashamed to put out
posters describing the wonderful pictures.
And what rare pictures you have! What is a novel? It is a film of
moving pictures. What is a great novel? It is a series of great
pictures--and what lovely pictures they may be; what interesting, what
inspiring pictures they may be! What a great collection of such mental
pictures you have in your libraries! And when people read George Barr
McCutcheon, try to get that film away from them and give them George
Meredith. You laugh at that, but how about "Harry Richmond?" Isn't it
as good a story as ever Anthony Hope or as ever George Barr McCutcheon
wrote? It is a good slide, a good film. When people come and want
to read Laura Jean Libbey--of course you wouldn't have her on the
premises--but if that is their standard try to work off Robert Louis
on them. You know, there are some of Robert Louis' that are fairly
sensational. You can get people started on the right road with Robert
Louis if you go about it in a clever way to pull the cheap slides out
of people's minds.
But, you say, there are a lot of people whose mental apparatus, if I
may modify the figure a little bit,--no, it is not a modification,
it is an amplification, it is a perfectly logical development of the
figure,--you say that for a good many people you want a magic lantern
in their mind that will focus properly. That is the business of
education. That is what Dr. Robertson and I are trying to do, to make
the minds of the young focus properly, on the right sort of things.
You must get a great deal of inaccurate information made accurate and
definite. You know, one of the great troubles with our educational
system is that our ideas are so haphazard, so untrustworthy.
The scientific slides need looking after carefully. They are changed
every few minutes, but we have to do the best we can to run the latest
and most trustworthy slides into the minds of the people. Then think of
the literary slides. I was very much interested in the discussion this
morning. I fear it will go on indefinitely as long as the gentlemen do
not define their terms. But I think if they were to do this they would
discover that they both believe about the same thing.
But here at hand is the real application of this figure. What is it
that makes life interesting? It is to be able to associate with the
ordinary, commonplace experiences of life an illuminating, inspiring,
fascinating imagery. Do you realize that the books in your library
give no pleasure whatever except as they interpret life to people who
bring the experience of life to the books? A book is a mere dead symbol
until it becomes vital in the life of a living man or woman. You have
books in your library in foreign languages. These books are sealed to
people who do not know those foreign languages. You would not think of
offering a French or German book, say, to an average college graduate.
You must have people who understand the language in which books are
written. So when you give a book of history or a book of science or
a book of poetry to a man or woman, that man or woman must bring a
little bit of life, a little gleam of life experience, in order to get
into any kind of relationship with that book. Then the book reacts
and becomes a guide for the further investigation and interpretation
of life. And so the book and life together go on enriching human
experience.
I wish we had more accurate slides about history, especially about
the French Revolution. We mostly get our slides on the French
Revolution from the Sunday evening sermons of eminent divines who are
proving that the French Revolution was completely parallel with our
times, and that France went to the bad largely because the Church was
temporarily disestablished. Now, if we get our slides of the French
Revolution from popular pulpits and from stump speakers we shall get
some curious pictures. We want to put into the minds of the people the
slides from men like Morse Stephens and von Holst before we introduce
those lurid and beautifully colored slides from Carlyle and those
rather melodramatic slides from "A tale of two cities." Then there
is the fall of Rome, for example. Anybody can explain the fall of
Rome, and we are always upon the brink of a French revolution. What
we need is an accurate picture of what caused Rome to fall. Then as
for Greece--Greece, that magic word! We need a lot of pictures about
Greece. I have a good deal of interest in classic culture if it can
be, for a large number of people, divorced from the classic languages.
To suppose that there is an identity between Greek grammar and Greek
life, its social institutions and its aspirations and their lessons
for us, is to make a very serious blunder. You have noticed that an
eminent Greek scholar from England has been lecturing at Amherst. Did
he talk about grammar? No. He talked about the philosophy of Greece,
the politics of Greece, the social history of Greece. These are things
we need; for, my friends, you know, and you need to preach this
doctrine, that modernity defeats itself. To suppose that reading the
daily newspaper and having the mind filled with contemporary events
gives any one a right to judge of those events, is absurdity itself. We
can understand the present only as we can connect that present with the
past. Therefore, if we are to have an intelligent population many men
must have a vivid and accurate panorama of human history; they must be
able to see the present in the light of the past, and then to predict
with some little degree of certainty what we are to have in the future.
Look, for example, at our present crisis. I am not going to interpret
it, I do not understand it; but we cannot possibly see beneath the
surface of it unless we try to interpret it in the light of the
experience of other nations. What have all the great nations of Western
Europe done? When we ask that question, and when we see how parties are
aligned in this Dominion where we meet to-night, we cannot fail to get
a little light upon what is going on at home. There the same social
forces are at work, under different conditions, to be sure, but working
themselves out inevitably.
So it is our business to fill the minds of our fellow citizens with
accurate pictures, with definite pictures, with pictures of reality,
with pictures which shall illumine every department of life. If there
is any aim in education, it seems to me it is to make man a citizen
of the world, to make him at home in nature, at home with mankind,
at home with all the great forces which play a part in his personal
development, which sweep through him into the lives of generations yet
unborn. When his mind is filled with such pictures, when the spectator
within him goes out to the best and finest and truest of these pictures
with genuine appreciation, then you have the development of personality
and the development of a great civilization.
You, my friends, are the keepers of these films and slides. It is your
business to see that they are well chosen, to see that they are made
available, to see that the people are stimulated, that the people
are made to realize vividly what it means to have their minds filled
with these true, these beautiful, these inspiring pictures which will
enable them to interpret life, to enter into it more richly, to get
out of it more joy, the joy of intelligent appreciation, the joy of
work well done, scientifically done, the joy of comradeship, the joy of
association in great enterprises. When these pictures fill the mind,
when the spectator within is loyal to them, then there is richness of
personal life, then there is genuine advancement of civilization.
Imagery is the clue to conduct. Without mental imagery there can be
no development of character. Without mental imagery there can be no
social progress. This mental imagery comes from the experience of life.
You are not the sole purveyors of it. Books, as I have said, are dead
and inert things until men with some experience of life come to them
for further insight and for guidance as they go their way trying to
understand life and to interpret it more truly and to get out of it
greater richness.
There is a delight in mental pictures. May our pictures be interesting
and true and ennobling, may they increase in number as the years go on,
may they open up to us vistas of personal satisfaction, give us keener
insight into the meaning of life and stir us to larger loyalties and to
truer service. May we pledge ourselves to this great work and to the
furthering and fostering of those things which Watson has so finely
called "the things that are more excellent."
"The grace of friendship, mind and heart
Linked with their fellow heart and mind,
The gains of science, gifts of art,
The sense of oneness with our kind,
The thirst to know and understand,
A large and liberal discontent,
These are the goods in life's rich hand,
The things that are more excellent."
At the conclusion of President Vincent's address, Mr. Lawrence J.
Burpee announced that M. Amedee Tremblay, organist of the Basilica,
would accompany a number of Canadian folk songs which M. Normandin, of
Montreal, would sing. They were given in three groups of three, and
between each group was given one of Dr. Drummond's poems in character,
by Mr. Heney, of Ottawa, a most excellent interpreter of these sketches
of the French-Canadian habitant.
These unique, interesting and well rendered contributions to the
exercises of the evening were much appreciated by all present, and at
their conclusion the session closed with a brief but hearty expression
of acknowledgment from President Elmendorf.