CHARACTER AND EXPERIENCE.

It is a remarkable memory that can recollect all the main facts of a book two weeks after reading it. How is it possible then for a man of average capacity to get beyond the state of absorbing knowledge and to begin constructive work?

In the first place, all the books in an enormous library like Widener are not on different subjects entirely. There are repetitions, thousands upon thousands of them, clothed in different works, different letters and even different languages. There are a thousand channels to the same end. The ideas that men live by, and which give the foundation for specialized development in the future, are not numerous. Emerson says it in the words, "Nature is an endless repetition of a very few laws. These laws which determine a man's character have been recorded through the ages," "Character is greater than intellect." But intellect can never become really constructive without a basis of character to build on.

Experience is at once a part and a cause of character. Experience gives knowledge the solidity that makes it useful in our daily lives. To put it crudely, there are two different kinds of knowledge--knowledge and experienced knowledge. The value of experience in any pursuit is well recognized. What does experience mean? It means, doing something--employing other senses than merely those of sight or hearing. It means touching things, it means motion, it means action. An act repeated a few times becomes infinitely more a part of you than a hazy mass of accumulated fact. The secret is open: pick out the fundamental truths from the confusion,--there are hundreds of channels to these truths--and then experience them.