The education of the savage is directed toward perpetuating this fixity; that of the civilized man should be a force in the opposite direction. Recognizing that change is the life-blood of civilization, it should be devoted to controlling and directing that change, leading the mind of the pupil to anticipating and welcoming it and bracing that mind against all feeling of shock due to the mere starting of the machinery of progress. I say this is what education should be. I believe that it is tending in this way. But a large part of it is still savage--an effort to keep our customs, thoughts and actions to standards set up by our ancestors. The Public Library, we are fond of saying, is an educational institution; which kind of education shall it dispense? Shall it be a motor or a brake? Shall it look back into the past or forward into the future? To many persons, the idea of a forward-looking library seems absurd. It is essentially a repository of records, and records are of the past. You will find somewhere, unless oblivion has overtaken it, an address by your lecturer on “The Public Library as a Conservative Force”. Such it doubtless is and such it should be--but its conservatism is that of control, not of stagnation. It is the skilled driver who keeps the car in the road--not the ignoramus who stalls it in the ditch. Records are assuredly of the past; but the past and its records may be looked upon in either of two ways--as standards for all time, or as foundations on which to build for the future. The civilized man rejoices in foundations--he builds them deep and strong, and erects upon them some noble superstructure. The savage puts up his great stone circle, mighty and wonderful perhaps, but complete in itself and of no manner of use. So I ask you, what is our collection of records to be--a stone circle or a foundation? Now the records themselves--the books--can never determine this any more than the great monolith can determine whether it is going into a Stonehenge or into the foundation of a Parthenon. It is what we do to the books--to and with them--that matters.