Is not this the right way to look at it?  I confess that I can see no reason for despairing of the American people because it reads more fiction than it used to read, so long as this is for the same reason that a ten year old boy reads more stories than a baby.  Intellectual youth is at least an advance over mental infancy so long as it is first childhood—­not second.  It is undoubtedly our duty, as it is our pleasure, to help these people to grow, but we cannot force them, and should not try.  Complete growth may take several generations.  And even when full stature has been obtained, literature in its narrative modes, though not so exclusively as now, will still be loved and read.  Romance will always serve as the dessert in the feast of reason—­and we should recollect that sugar is now highly regarded as a food.  It is a producer of energy in easily available form, and, thinking on some such novels as “Uncle Tom,” “Die Waffen nieder” and shall we say “The jungle”? we realize that this thing is a parable, which the despiser of fiction may well read as he runs.

THE VALUE OF ASSOCIATION[3]

    [3] An address delivered before the Library Associations of Iowa,
        Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, October 9-18, 1907.

Man is a gregarious animal; he cannot think, act, or even exist except in certain relations to others of his kind.  For a complete description of those relations we must go to a treatise on sociology; our present subject is a very brief consideration of certain groups of individuals, natural or voluntary, and the application of the laws that govern such groups to the voluntary associations with which we are all familiar in library work.  Men have joined together to effect certain things that they could not accomplish singly, ever since two savages found that they could lift a heavy log or stone together, when neither one could manage it alone.  Until recently the psychology of human groups has received little study.  Le Bon, in his book on “The Crowd,” gives the modern treatment of it.  A group of persons does not think and act precisely as each of its component individuals would think or act.  The very act of association, loose as it may be, introduces a new factor.  Even the two savages lifting the log do not work together precisely as either would have worked singly.  Their co-operation affects their activity; and both thought and action may likewise be affected in larger groupings even by the mere proximity of the individuals of the group, where there is no stronger bond.