Future progress depends on a wide diffusion of the library arts; it depends on the attitude of that much-abused person the general reader. When the general reader uses public libraries wisely and well, and finds them indispensable to a full life, their position will be assured. The largest body of readers will always be composed of this class: the object of education is to turn out intelligent general readers.[51] The Adult Education Committee expressed too narrow a view of the library’s function in the social organism when they insisted on the paramount claims of vocational and non-vocational education, and spoke slightingly of the general reader, the vast multitude who are guilty of “unsystematic and recreative reading.” It is only fair to notice, however, two passages in which the Adult Education Committee did not overlook the claims of the general reader and of imaginative literature:-- “The Lending Department is the main feature in the smaller libraries; it provides such books as are suitable for continuous reading or study and in convenient form. The books cover the whole range of knowledge, physical and metaphysical, ancient and modern, philosophy, religion, sociology, language and literature, science, fine and useful arts, history and travel. The recreative element in reading bulks largely in the statistics of this department. Very much of what is best and most elevating in English literature takes the form of fiction, and selecting this with care and discretion the library gives valuable impulse in the direction of broadening the mental outlook, enlarging the sympathies, and elevating the tastes and feeling of readers. Any estimate of the cultural work of the library which omits the effects, more or less unconscious, of the reading of the best poetical and imaginative literature is gravely incomplete and inadequate.” “It is clear, however, that local education authorities may neglect the ‘general reader’ in their desire to obtain from the public libraries the maximum of assistance for more serious students. This is a danger which must be guarded against. It is part of the problem of how to retain the freedom and elasticity of the library with the more organized administration of the system of public education. It is with no desire to subordinate the libraries or belittle their importance that we recommend the union of educational and library administration.”[52]