names. It is one form of the universal desire for knowledge. And
it is so strong that men whose whole lives have been given to the
systematic acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it to
overstep the limits of their programme in search of still more
knowledge. Even Herbert Spencer, in my opinion the greatest mind
that ever lived, was often forced by it into agreeable little
backwaters of inquiry.

I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the
wish to live--that is to say, people who have intellectual
curiosity--the aspiration to exceed formal programmes takes a
literary shape. They would like to embark on a course of reading.
Decidedly the British people are becoming more and more literary.
But I would point out that literature by no means comprises the
whole field of knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst to improve
one's self--to increase one's knowledge--may well be slaked quite
apart from literature. With the various ways of slaking I shall
deal later. Here I merely point out to those who have no natural
sympathy with literature that literature is not the only well.



III

PRECAUTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING

Now that I have succeeded (if succeeded I have) in persuading you to
admit to yourself that you are constantly haunted by a suppressed
dissatisfaction with your own arrangement of your daily life; and
that the primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the