he new-born child when he
wakes in the sunshine of the earth, and little by little on the edge of
the infinite, groping and slow, begins to make his connections with the
universe. It cannot be over-emphasised that this new-born child makes
these connections for himself, that the entire value of having these
connections made is in the fact that he makes them for himself. As
between the books in a library that ought to be read, and a new life
standing in it, that ought to read them, the sacred thing is not the
books the child ought to read. The sacred thing is the way the child
feels about the books; and unless the new life, like the needle of a
magnet trembling there under the whole wide heaven of them all, is
allowed to turn and poise itself by laws of attraction and repulsion
forever left out of our hands, the magnet is ruined. It is made a dead
thing. It makes no difference how many similar books may be placed
within range of the dead thing afterward, nor how many good reasons
there may be for the dead thing's being attracted to them, the poise of
the magnet toward a book, which is the sole secret of any power that a
book can have, is trained and disciplined out of it. The poise of the
magnet, the magnet's poising itself, is inspiration, and inspiration is
what a book is for.

If John Milton had had any idea when he wrote the little book called
_Paradise Lost_ that it was going to be used mostly during the
nineteenth century to batter children's minds with, it is doubtful if he
would ever have had the heart to write it. It does not damage a book
very much to let it lie on a wooden shelf little longer than it ought
to. But to come crashing down into the exquisite filaments of a human
brain with it, to use it to keep a brain from continuing to be a
brain--that is, an organ with all its reading senses acting and reacting
warm and living in it, is a very serious matter. It always ends in the
same way, this modern brutality with books. Even Bibles cannot stand it.
Human nature stands it least of all. That books of all things in this
world, made to open men's instincts with, should be so generally used to
shut them up with, is one of the saddest signs we have of the caricature
of culture that is having its way in our modern world. It is getting so
that the only way the average dinned-at, educated modern boy, shut in
with masterpieces, can really get to read is in some still overlooked
moment when people are too tired of him