isation, but if
civilisation should ever have another man in the course of time who knows
how to read a book, it would not know what to do with him. No provision is
made for such a man. We have nothing but libraries--monstrous libraries
to lose him in. The books take up nearly all the room in civilisation,
and civilisation takes up the rest. The man is not allowed to peep in
civilisation. He is too busy in being ordered around by it to know that
he would like to. It does not occur to him that he ought to be allowed
time in it to know who he is, before he dies. The typical civilised man
is an exhausted, spiritually hysterical man because he has no idea of
what it means, or can be made to mean to a man, to face calmly with his
whole life a great book, a few minutes every day, to rest back on his
ideals in it, to keep office hours with his own soul.

The practical value of a book is the inherent energy and quietness of
the ideals in it--the immemorial way ideals have--have always had--of
working themselves out in a man, of doing the work of the man and of
doing their own work at the same time.

Inasmuch as ideals are what all real books are written with and read
with, and inasmuch as ideals are the only known way a human being has of
resting, in this present world, it would be hard to think of any book
that would be more to the point in this modern civilisation than a book
that shall tell men how to read to live,--how to touch their ideals
swiftly every day. Any book that should do this for us would touch life
at more points and flow out on men's minds in more directions than any
other that could be conceived. It would contribute as the June day, or
as the night for sleep, to all men's lives, to all of the problems of
all of the world at once. It would be a night latch--to the ideal.

Whatever the remedy may be said to be, one thing is certainly true with
regard to our reading habits in modern times. Men who are habitually
shamefaced or absent-minded before the ideal--that is, before the actual
nature of things--cannot expect to be real readers of books. They can
only be what most men are nowadays, merely busy and effeminate,
running-and-reading sort of men--rushing about propping up the universe.
Men who cannot trust the ideal--the nature of things,--and who think
they can do better, are naturally kept very busy, and as they take no
time to rest back on their ideals they are naturally very tired. The
result stares at us