power as energizers; in addition we now see that they may act as fingers
on invisible mental triggers. A slight impulse--altogether trivial
compared with its effect--and off goes the gun. The discharge may carry a
line to a wrecked ship, or it may sink her with all on board.

We frequently hear it said of some book whose tendency is bad: "Well, it
can't hurt me, anyway; I'm immune." Are you quite sure? Have you gone
quite to the bottom of those ancestral memories of yours, and are you
certain that there are none that such a book may rouse, to your harm?

On the other hand, does this not explain much that has always interested
the librarian; for instance, the vast popularity of fairy tales,
especially those that date back to our racial infancy? I need dwell no
further on the economic importance of the book as viewed from this
standpoint.

But it has also a function almost diametrically opposed to that which we
have just considered; besides harking back to what is oldest it looks
forward to what is newest. It may stir us by awakening dim racial
recollections; but it may also thrill us by adding to the store of what is
already in the mind. In fact, we like to assimilate new ideas, to think
new thoughts, to do new acts; we like to read or hear something that we
could not have produced ourselves. When we are young and ignorant,
therefore, we like music or art or literature that appears trivial to us
as we grow older and have developed our own creative powers. A poem that
is no better than one a man might dash off himself he likes no longer; he
prefers to be confronted with something that is above and beyond his own
powers, though not above his comprehension. Thus, as he grows, his zone of
enjoyment shifts upward, and the library covers the whole moving field.
When Solomon John Peterkin, pen in hand, sat down to write a book, he