a broader horizon, to get away from his cramped environment--that is about
all. How many boys, impelled by such feelings, have gone out into the
world with no clear idea of what they are fitted to do, or even what they
really desire! To how many others has the companionship of a few books
meant the opening of a peep-hole, thru which, dimly perhaps, but none the
less really, have been descried definite possibilities, needs, and
opportunities!

To all of these youths books have been selective aids merely--they have
added little or nothing to the actual training whose extent and character
they have served to point out. Such cases, which it would be easy to
multiply, illustrate the value of books in the selective functions of
training. To assert that they exercise such a function is only another way
of saying that a mind orients itself by the widest contact with other
minds. There are other ways of assuring this contact, and these should not
be neglected; but only thru books can it approach universality both in
space and in time. How else could we know exactly what Homer and St.
Augustine and Descartes thought and what Tolstoi and Lord Kelvin and
William James, we will say, are even now thinking?

It has scarcely been necessary to say all this to convince you of the
value of books as aids to education; but it is certainly interesting to
find that in an examination of the selective processes in education, we
meet with our old friends in such an important role.

A general collection of books, then, constitutes an important factor in
the selective part of an education. Where shall we place this collection?
I venture to say that altho every school must have a library to aid in the
formative part of its training, the library as a selective aid should be
large and central and should preferably be at the disposal of the student