It is so certain that information, i.e., the
knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown
to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the
learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that
fall from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in that
vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom active life leaves with but
a few cramped hours of study can hardly come to know the very vastness
of the field before them, or how infinitesimally small is the corner
they can traverse at the best. We know all is not of equal value. We
know that books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand
on the seashore, as much as our living friend differs from a dead rat.
We know that much in the myriad-peopled world of books--very much in all
kinds--is trivial, enervating, inane, even noxious. And thus, where we
have infinite opportunities of wasting our efforts to no end, of
fatiguing our minds without enriching them, of clogging the spirit
without satisfying it, there, I cannot but think, the very infinity of
opportunities is robbing us of the actual power of using them.
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