measures to arouse a permanent interest in good literature, which would in
itself lead to the reading of standard works and would sustain the reader
until he had finished his task, we have often tried to replace such an
interest by a fictitious and temporary stimulus, due to appeals to duty,
or to that vague and confused idea that one should "improve one's mind,"
unaccompanied by any definite plan of ways and means. There is no more
powerful moral motor than duty, but it loses its force when we try to
apply it to cases that lie without the province of ethics. The man who has
no permanent interest in historical literature, and who is impelled to
begin a six-volume history because he conceives it to be his "duty" to
read it, is apt to conclude, before he has finished the second volume,
that his is a case where inclination (or in this instance disinclination)
is the proper guide.

As a matter of fact, the formation of a cultivated and permanent taste for
good reading is generally a matter of lifelong education. It must be begun
when the child reads his first book. An encouraging sign for the future is
the care that is now taken in all good libraries to supervise the reading
of children and to provide for them special quarters and facilities. A
somewhat disheartening circumstance, on the other hand, is the
multiplication of annotated and abbreviated children's editions of all
sorts of works that were read by the last generation of children without
any such treatment. This kind of boned chicken may be very well for the
mental invalid, but the ordinary child prefers to separate his meat from
the "drumstick" by his own unaided effort, and there is no doubt that it
is better for him to do so.

In the following table, the average circulation of first volumes, second
volumes, etc., is given for each of seven classes of works. The falling
off from volume to volume is noticeable in each class. It is most marked