the body, but our theory is that it can be satisfied in a different way.  There was an old belief that in order that we should enjoy food, and that it should perform its function of assimilation, we must work for it, and that the exertion needed to earn it brought the appetite that made it profitable to the system.  We still have the idea that we must eat for ourselves, and that we cannot delegate this performance, as we do the filling of the mind, to some one else.  We may have ceased to relish the act of eating, as we have ceased to relish the act of studying, but we cannot yet delegate it, even although our power of digesting food for the body has become almost as feeble as the power of acquiring and digesting food for the mind.

It is beautiful to witness our reliance upon others.  The house may be full of books, the libraries may be as free and as unstrained of impurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or study anything we resort to a club.  We gather together a number of persons of like capacity with ourselves.  A subject which we might grapple with and run down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, by personal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity with it.  A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can have read to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort.  Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas?  Oh yes, when there are ideas to exchange.  Is there nothing stimulating in the conflict of mind with mind?  Oh yes, when there is any mind for a conflict.  But the mind does not grow without personal effort and conflict and struggle with itself.  It is a living organism, and not at all like a jar or other receptacle for fluids.  The physiologists say that what we eat will not do us much good unless we chew it.  By analogy we may presume that the mind is not greatly benefited by what it gets without considerable exercise of the mind.

Still, it is a beautiful theory that we can get others to do our reading and thinking, and stuff our minds for us.  It may be that psychology will yet show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way.  But just now the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge—­which every intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate—­of being content with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to others for our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of a book for the book itself, or—­a refinement on that—­with a review of the reviews.  The method is still crude.  Perhaps we may expect a further development of the “slot” machine.  By dropping a cent in the slot one can get his weight, his age, a piece of chewing-gum, a bit of candy, or a shock that will energize his nervous system.  Why not get from a similar machine a “good business