But there is much more than this. Even to those who resolutely avoid the
idleness of reading what is trivial, a difficulty is presented--a
difficulty every day increasing by virtue even of our abundance of
books. What are the subjects, what are the class of books we are to
read, in what order, with what connection, to what ultimate use or
object? Even those who are resolved to read the better books are
embarrassed by a field of choice practically boundless. The longest
life, the greatest industry, joined to the most powerful memory, would
not suffice to make us profit from a hundredth part of the world of
books before us. If the great Newton said that he seemed to have been
all his life gathering a few shells on the shore, whilst a boundless
ocean of truth still lay beyond and unknown to him, how much more to
each of us must the sea of literature be a pathless immensity beyond our
powers of vision or of reach--an immensity in which industry itself is
useless without judgment, method, discipline; where it is of infinite
importance what we can learn and remember, and of utterly no importance
what we may have once looked at or heard of. Alas! the most of our
reading leaves as little mark even in our own education as the foam that
gathers round the keel of a passing boat! For myself, I am inclined to
think the most useful help to reading is to know what we should not
read, what we can keep out from that small cleared spot in the
overgrown jungle of "information," the corner which we can call our
ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge. The incessant accumulation of
fresh books must hinder any real knowledge of the old; for the
multiplicity of volumes becomes a bar upon our use of any. In literature
especially does it hold--that we cannot see the wood for the trees.

How shall we choose our books? Which are the best, the eternal,
indispensable books? To all to whom reading is something more than a