cases where formal training is absolutely necessary, access to other books
than text-books is an aid to selection both qualitative and quantitative.
Books may serve as samples. To take an extreme case, a boy who had no
knowledge whatever of the nature of law or medicine would certainly not be
competent 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