want to interest him in the world of ideas in general, turn him loose in a general library. The things that he will get are not to be ascertained by an examination. They are intangible, but their results are not. In an illuminating article on the events just preceding the present European war, Professor Munroe Smith holds that it was precipitated chiefly by bringing to the front at every step military rather than diplomatic considerations. The trouble with military men, he says, is that they take no account of “imponderables”--by which he means public opinion, national feeling, injured pride, joy, grief--all those things, intellectual and emotional, that cannot be expressed in terms of men, guns, supplies, and military position. I have been wondering whether some other technically trained persons--educators, for instance, do not tend toward a similar neglect of imponderables, measuring educational values solely in terms of hours, and units, and the passing of examinations. It is a fault common to all highly trained specialists. The Scripture has a phrase for it, as for most things--“ye neglect the weightier matters of the law--judgment and faith.” These, you will note, are to be classed with Professor Munroe Smith’s “imponderables,” whereas mint, anise, and cummin are commercial products. At least one noted educator, William James, did not make this error, for he bids us note that the emotional “imponderable”--though he does not use this word--possesses the priceless property of unlocking within us unsuspected stores of energy and placing them at our disposal. “I thank thee, Roderick, for the word,” says Fitz-James in “The Lady of the Lake”: “it nerves my heart; it steels my sword.” One would hardly expect to find educational psychology in Scott’s verse, but here it is. The word that Roderick Dhu spoke (I forget just what it was, but I think he called his rival a bad name) unlocked in Fitz-James an unexpected store of reserve energy, and the result, as I recall it, was quite unfortunate from the Gaelic point of view. We cannot afford to neglect the imponderables; and it is their presence and their influence that are fostered by a collection of books. If you will add together the weight of leather, paper, glue, thread, and ink in a book you will get the whole weight of the volume. There is naught ponderable left; and yet what is left is all that makes the thing a book--all that has power to influence the lives and souls of men--the imponderable part, fit for the unlocking of energies.