THE HOSPITABLE MIND

"Useless Information", an article in the May Atlantic by R.M. Gay, is an eloquent defence of "the hospitable mind" of "well-appointed heads that carry about a quantity of odds and ends, picked up without thought or conscious intention during the journey of life". It seeks a favorable hearing for the man who lets his mind grow, rather than be cultivated, and an escape from the educational expert "who can tell you how to put a mind together as one would a salad". It is one of those rare protests against the brutal carrying out of specialization which, on the whole, is characteristic of our educational system today. What sort of a man is it who stuffs himself with useless information? Mr. Gay gives a list of men equipped with "out-at-the-elbow, down-at-the-heel sort of minds" including Herodotus, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Scott, Anatole France and others.

The trouble with our joining the ranks of Mr. Gay's hospitable minds seems to be based on a natural modesty. We are not Shakespeares or Chaucers and we dare not take a chance of becoming so by letting our minds go, to seed while Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones devotes all his energies to advertising or electrical engineering. The shout goes up--this is an age of specialization; a man must live. Yet there is a perfectly good answer to these objections. The young Chaucers will take care of themselves, never fear; for the rest of us a consciousness that all specialization and no play makes Jack a dull boy will be necessary. There are those who often drop into the Farnsworth room for an hour or two, those who go to the Copley Theatre as well as the movies, those who find a great deal of pleasure in reading unusual books from pure curiosity, not because they think they ought to. "A man's general information is the true key to his personality", says Mr. Gay; which is not far from the truth when we consider the really useful men we know. General information!--"vestiges of an unconscionable amount of reading, observation and experience" picked up here and there in the course of following our particular whims.