this mere business precaution, it may well be that you, too,
without knowing it, are little by little joining the triflers who read
only because eternity is so long. It may well be that even
your alleged sacred passion is, after all, simply a sort of drug-habit.
The suggestion disturbs and worries you. You dismiss it impatiently;
but it returns.

How (you ask, unwillingly) can a man perform a mental stocktaking?
How can he put a value on what he gets from books? How can he
effectively test, in cold blood, whether he is receiving
from literature all that literature has to give him?

The test is not so vague, nor so difficult, as might appear.

If a man is not thrilled by intimate contact with nature:
with the sun, with the earth, which is his origin and the arouser
of his acutest emotions--

If he is not troubled by the sight of beauty in many forms--

If he is devoid of curiosity concerning his fellow-men
and his fellow-animals--

If he does not have glimpses of the unity of all things
in an orderly progress--

If he is chronically "querulous, dejected, and envious"--

If he is pessimistic--