It casts aside altogether the
idea that people have that if they are reading any book--that if
an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than
nothing at all. I entirely call that in question. I even venture to
deny it. (Laughter and cheers.) It would be much safer and better
would he have no concern with books at all than with some of them. You
know these are my views. There are a number, an increasing number, of
books that are decidedly to him not useful. (Hear.) But he will learn
also that a certain number of books were written by a supreme, noble
kind of people--not a very great number--but a great number adhere
more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written
it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men's
souls--divided into sheep and goats. (Laughter and applause.) Some
of them are calculated to be of very great advantage in teaching--in
forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others are going down,
down, doing more and more, wilder and wilder mischief.
And for the rest, in regard to all your studies here, and whatever
you may learn, you are to remember that the object is not particular
knowledge--that you are going to get higher in technical perfections,
and all that sort of thing.
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