In other words, we are told, members of this family are born with certain
predispositions--latent ancestral memories, we may say, of the occupations
of previous generations. To make these effective, it is necessary only to
awaken them, and this may be done simply by the sight of other persons
performing gymnastic feats. These they learn in weeks, where others,
without such ancestral memories, would require months or years.

Evidently this may be applied much more widely than to mere physical
skill. Few of us can boast of gymnastic ancestry, but all of us have
inherited predispositions and have ancestral memories that make it easier
for us to learn certain things and to choose certain courses than we
should find it without them. Some of these are good; some bad. Some are
useful; some injurious. It is necessary only to awaken them to set going a
train of consequences; if not awakened, they may remain permanently
dormant. How important, therefore, are the suggestions that may serve as
such awakeners; how necessary to bring forward the useful, and to banish
the injurious ones!

Now of all possible agencies that may bring these predispositions into
play--that may awaken our ancestral memories, if you choose to adopt this
theory--I submit that the book stands at the very head. For it is itself a
racial record; it may contain, in the form best suited to awaken our
predispositions, the very material which, long ages ago, was instrumental
in handing those predispositions down to us. It is in tune with our latent
memories, and it may set them vibrating more vigorously than any merely
contemporary agency.

Does this not place in a new and interesting light the library and the
books of which it is composed? We have learned to respect them as the
records of the race and to recognize their value as teachers and their