ancient chronicles and forgotten charters--what is it that they do but
to multiply and revive useless knowledge, and to make it increasingly
difficult for a man to arrive at a broad and philosophical view, or
ever attack his subject at the point where it may conceivably affect
humanity or even character? The problem of the modern world is the
multiplication of books and records, and every new detail dragged to
light simply encumbers the path of the student. I have no doubt that
this is a shallow and feeble-minded view. But I am not advancing it as
a true view; I am only imploring help; I only desire light. I am only
too ready to believe in the virtues and uses of erudition, if any one
will point them out to me. But at present it only appears to me like a
gigantic mystification, enabling those who hold richly endowed posts to
justify themselves to the world, and to keep the patronage of these
emoluments in their own hands. Supposing, as a reductio ad absurdum,
that some wealthy individual were to endow an institution in order that
the members of it might count the number of threads in carpets. One can
imagine a philosophical defence being made of the pursuit. A man might
say that it was above all things necessary to classify, and
investigate, and to arrive at the exact truth; to compare the number of
threads in different carpets, and that the sordid difficulties which
encumbered such a task should not be regarded, in the light of the fact
that here, at least, exact results had been obtained.

Of course, that is all very silly! But I believe; only I want my
unbelief helped! If you can tell me what services are rendered by
erudition to national life, you will relieve my doubts. Do not merely
say that it enlarges the bounds of knowledge, unless you are also
prepared to prove that knowledge is, per se, a desirable thing. I am
not sure that it is not a hideous idol, a Mumbo Jumbo, a Moloch in
whose honour children have still to pass through the fire in the
recesses of dark academic groves.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
Nov. 1, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have read, after a fashion, in the course of the
last month, the Autobiography of Herbert Spencer. I know nothing of his
philosophy--I doubt if I have read half-a-dozen pages of his writings;
and the man, as revealed in his own transparent confessions, is almost
wholly destitute of attractiveness. All the same it is an intensely
interesting book, because it is the