Page 49 Advertisements Column 1

Otago Witness, Issue 2396, 1 February 1900, Page 49

"When a man asks himself whether it is worth while to buy a book, the burden of proof rests upon the book, and not upon the purchaser. The vis inertia, the rule that change and movement shall not occur without a cause, is the elementary law that keeps the planets in their places, and it is as sound a rule of conduct as of physics. There is the money at the banker's, capable of transformation into any orie of a thousand pleasing fcrms, and desirable in itself without any transformation ; a power in reserve, a sword in the scabbard ; and a sword that does not rust, but grows longer and sharper day by day, doubling itself after a few years if one leaves it undisturbed. Yet within the last year more than 25,000 of the people of Great Britain and her colonies have exchanged money for copies of The Times' reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica, believing that the books are of more use to them than the sovereigns- would have been. r Why? To begin with first principles, every man lives by the exercise of his wit, the use of his mmd — the capitalist and the landowner as well as the merchant and the professional man, for it needs as much intelligence nowadays to keep money when one has it as to make money in the first place ; the percentage of persons who are unable to take care of the money they have, and to get the best value for the money they make, being quite as large as the percentage of persons who are unable to acquire money. The brain is the watchdog, as well as the money-getter ; the housekeeper, as well as the bread-winner. Thought lias taken the place of physical force. The cave-dweller who could run fastest and strike hardest brought home the largest store of meat and pelts, when the world was young. Nowadays the man who thinks quickly and accurately is the man who attains his object in life, whether it be power or pleasure : power for good or for evil, enjoyment for himself or for other people. The cave-dweller had to eat meat and wear skins in order to gain the strengbh to seek for more meat and more skins, and we have to spend money in order to train our minds. During the earlier years of life we give nearly all our tinie and energy to this training, but it is only the foundation that we can hope to build before the struggle begins. A man cannot cease to read and think when he has completed this process of formal education, any more than he can cease eating when he attains adult stature. His mind works with or without his

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