like many another, incomplete.

So I am going to ask you after all to pass a tranquil hour with me in
pondering a quiet chapter in the history of books. There is a loud cry
in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the
vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes. Everybody calls for
hints what to read, and what to look out for in reading. Like all the
rest of us, I have often been asked for a list of the hundred best
books, and the other day a gentleman wrote to me to give him by return
of post that far more difficult thing--list of the three best books in
the world. Both the hundred and the three are a task far too high for
me; but perhaps you will let me try to indicate what, among so much
else, is one of the things best worth hunting for in books, and one
of the quarters of the library where you may get on the scent. Though
tranquil, it will be my fault if you find the hour dull, for this
particular literary chapter concerns life, manners, society, conduct,
human nature, our aims, our ideals, and all besides that is most
animated and most interesting in man's busy chase after happiness and
wisdom.

What is wisdom? That sovereign word, as has often been pointed out, is
used for two different things. It may stand for knowledge, learning,
science, systematic reasoning; or it may mean, as Coleridge has
defined it, common sense in an uncommon degree; that is to say, the
unsystematic truths that come to shrewd, penetrating, and observant
minds, from their own experience of life and their daily commerce with
the world, and that is called the wisdom of life, or the wisdom of the
world, or the wisdom of time and the ages. The Greeks had two words
for these two kinds of wisdom: one for the wise who scaled the heights
of thought and knowledge; another for those who, without logical