When the open-shelf library was first introduced we were told that one of its chief advantages was that it encouraged “browsing”—­the somewhat aimless rambling about and dipping here and there into a book.  Obviously this can not be done in a closed-shelf library.  But of late it has been suggested, in one quarter or another, that although this may be a pleasant occupation to some, or even to most, it is not a profitable one.  Opponents of the open shelf of whom there are still one or two, here and there, find in this conclusion a reason for negativing the argument in its favor, while those of its advocates who accept this view see in it only a reason for basing that argument wholly on other grounds.

Now those of us who like a thing do not relish being told that it is not good for us.  We feel that pleasure was intended as an outward sign of benefits received and although it may in abnormal conditions deceive us, we are right in demanding proof before distrusting its indications.  When the cow absorbs physical nutriment by browsing, she does so without further reason than that she likes it.  Does the absorber of mental pabulum from books argue wrongly from similar premises?

Many things are hastily and wrongly condemned because they do not achieve certain results that they were not intended to achieve.  And in particular, when a thing exists in several degrees or grades, some one of those grades is often censured, although good in itself, because it is not a grade or two higher.  Obviously everything depends on what is required.  When a shopper wants just three yards of cloth, she would be foolish to buy four.  She would, of course, be even more foolish to imagine that, if she really wished four, three would do just as well.  But if a man wants to go to the eighth story of a building, he should not be condemned because he does not mount to the ninth; if he wishes a light lunch, he should not be found fault with for not ordering a seven-course dinner.  And yet we continually hear persons accused of “superficiality” who purposely and knowingly acquire some slight degree of knowledge of a subject instead of a higher degree.  And others are condemned, we will say, for reading for amusement when they might have read for serious information, without inquiring whether amusement, in this instance, was not precisely what they needed.

It may be, therefore, that browsing is productive of some good result, and that it fails to effect some other, perhaps some higher, result which its critics have wrongly fixed upon as the one desirable thing in this connection.

When a name embodies a figure of speech, we may often learn something by following up the figure to see how far it holds good.  What does an animal do, and what does it not do, when it “browses”?  In the first place it eats food—­fresh, growing food; but, secondly, it eats this food by cropping off the tips of the herbage, not taking much at once, and again, it moves about from place to place, eating