to do him good. Then softly,
perhaps guiltily, left all by himself with a book, he stumbles all of a
sudden on his soul--steals out and loves something. It may not be the
best, but listening to the singing of the crickets is more worth while
than seeming to listen to the music of the spheres. It leads to the
music of the spheres. All agencies, persons, institutions, or customs
that interfere with this sensitive, self-discovering moment when a human
spirit makes its connection in life with its ideal, that interfere with
its being a genuine, instinctive, free and beautiful connection, living
and growing daily of itself,--all influences that tend to make it a
formal connection or a merely decorous or borrowed one, whether they act
in the name of culture or religion or the state, are the profoundest,
most subtle, and most unconquerable enemies of culture in the world.

It is not necessary to contend for the doctrine of reading as one
likes--using the word "likes" in the sense of direction and
temperament--in its larger and more permanent sense. It is but necessary
to call attention to the fact that the universe of books is such a very
large and various universe, a universe in which so much that one likes
can be brought to bear at any given point, that reading as one likes is
almost always safe in it. There is always more of what one likes than
one can possibly read. It is impossible to like any one thing deeply
without discovering a hundred other things to like with it. One is
infallibly led out. If one touches the universe vitally at one point,
all the rest of the universe flocks to it. It is the way a universe is
made.

Almost anything can be accomplished with a child who has a habit of
being eager with books, who respects them enough, and who respects
himself enough, to leave books alone when he cannot be eager with them.
Eagerness in reading counts as much as it does in living. A live reader
who reads the wrong books is more promising than a dead one who reads
the right ones. Being alive is the point. Anything can be done with
life. It is the Seed of Infinity.

While much might be said for the topical or purely scientific method in
learning how to read, it certainly is not claiming too much for the
human, artistic, or personal point of view in reading, that it comes
first in the order of time in a developing life and first in the order
of strategic importance. Topical or scientific reading cannot be
fruitful; it can