iverse, when it
reads,--possible selves outward-bound and inward-bound trooping before
It. Some of these selves are exports and some are imports.

If the principle of selection is conceived in a large enough spirit, and
is set in operation soon enough, and is continued long enough, there is
not a child that can be born on the earth who shall not be able to
determine by the use of books, in the course of the years, what manner
of man he shall be. He may not be able to determine how soon he shall be
that man, or how much of that man shall be fulfilled in himself before
he dies, and how much of him shall be left over to be fulfilled in his
children, but the fact remains that to an extraordinary degree, through
a live use of books, not only a man's education after he is born, but
his education before he is born, is placed in his hands. It is the
supreme office of books that they do this; that they place the laws of
heredity and environment where a man with a determined spirit can do
something besides cringing to them. Neither environment nor
heredity--taken by itself--can give a man a determined spirit, but it is
everything to know that, given a few books and the determined spirit
both, a man can have any environment he wants for living his life, and
his own assorted ancestors for living it. It is only by means of books
that a man can keep from living a partitioned-off life in the world--can
keep toned up to the divine sense of possibility in it. We hear great
men every day, across space and time, halloaing to one another in books,
and across all things, as we feel and read, is the call of our possible
selves. Even the impossible has been achieved, books tell us, in
history, again and again. It has been achieved by several men. This may
not prove very much, but if it does not prove anything else, it proves
that the possible, at least, is the privilege of the rest of us. It has
its greeting for every man. The sense of the possible crowds around him,
and not merely in his books nor merely in his life, but in the place
where his life and books meet--in his soul. However or wherever a man
may be placed, it is the great book that reminds him Who he is. It
reminds him who his Neighbour is. It is his charter of possibility.
Having seen, he acts on what he sees, and reads himself out and reads
himself in accordingly.

V

The Great Game

It would be hard to say which is the more important, reading for exports
or imports, read