Encyclopédie

“ As a matter of fact, the Middle Ages furnish us with many examples of the popularization of science, of the writing of compendia of various kinds, of the gathering of information to save others the trouble, and, above all, of the making of what, in the modern time, we would call encyclopedias. Handbooks of various kinds were issued, manuals for students and specialists, and many men of broad scholarship in their time devoted themselves to the task of making the acquisition of knowledge easy for others. This was true not only for history and philosophy and literature, but also for science. ”

“ Such a work may be a monument of careful labor, which is still misdirected. The question remains, What is its purpose, and how is its design fulfilled? There are cyclopædias upon all subjects, commerce, chemistry, agriculture, technology, fine art, engineering, and various other branches of knowledge; and they have special values, of course, for the cultivators of those branches, though very little value for general use. It is folly to expatiate upon the accuracy and fullness of a cyclopædia of antiquities, for example, to one who cares nothing about the subject. ”

“ To get up an article in a Review on any subject of general literature is quite as much as I can do without exposing myself. The object of an Encyclopædia is, I take it, to condense and combine all the facts relating to a subject, and all the theories of any consequence already known or advanced. Now, where the business of such a work ends, is just where I begin, that is, I might perhaps throw in an idle speculation or two of my own, not contained in former accounts of the subject, and which would have very little pretensions to rank as scientific. ”

“ In the present work, we have preferably adopted the term "Encyclopædia," for reasons which the philological reader will easily discover. But upon the motive which have induced us to combine this word with the epithet "Domestic," we cannot in this place expatiate; as such an account will appear with more propriety in a future preface.
Many attempts have been made by writers, to reduce the whole circle of the arts and sciences to a systematic order, and exhibit a connected view of them, by representing what has emphatically been called "The Tree of Knowledge;" ”

“ I know well that I shall be told that I am out of date, that such an opinion is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness—that the dictionary catalogue has won its battle—but even so, perhaps the more so, do I feel it the part of a serious and immovable conviction to declare my belief that—for student and librarian alike—this twofold catalogue, author and subject each in its own division, is the best catalogue a library can have, and that the dictionary catalogue is the very worst. ”

“ One group of historians, labouring in the obscurest depths, dig and prepare the ground, searching and sifting the documentary soil with infinite labour and over an area immensely wide. They are followed by those scholars and specialists in history who give their lives to the study of a single period, and who sow literature in the furrows of research prepared by those who have preceded them. Last of all comes the essayist, or writer pure and simple, who reaps the harvest so laboriously prepared. ”

“ Everybody has heard of the Encyclopædists of France. Who are they? They are a group of men who, during the eighteenth century, associated themselves together for the production of a great work to be the repository of all human knowledge,—in one word, of an encyclopædia. The project was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable—in part. For there was mixture of motive in the case. In part, the motive was simple desire to advance the cause of human enlightenment; in part, however, the motive was desire to undermine Christianity. ”

“ For the special student there is too little, for the general reader too much. Detailed knowledge of any subject in this age of specialisation can be acquired only by study of the works specifically devoted to it. What is wanted in a popular Encyclopædia is succinct information—the more succinct the better, so long as it gives what is required by the inquiry, leaving it to the authorities in each subject to supply the information desired by those intent on pursuing it further. ”

“ While every individual article in an encyclopædia which aims at authoritative exposition must be informed by the spirit of history, it is no less essential that the spirit of science should move over The spirit of science.the construction of the work as a whole. Whatever may be the deficiencies of its execution, the Eleventh Edition has at any rate this advantage to those who use it, that the method of simultaneous preparation, already referred to, has enabled every subject to be treated systematically. ”

“ But in critical places we must indicate minutely the sources we follow, and must refer not only to the important books, but to articles in periodical works, and even to original documents, and to transcripts in libraries. The result would amount to an ordinary volume, presenting a conspectus of historical literature, and enumerating all the better books, the newly acquired sources, and the last discoveries. It would exhibit in the clearest light the vast difference between history, original and authentic, and history, antiquated and lower than high-water mark of present learning. ... ”

“ The Collections in Popular Literature will, therefore, embrace most of the features of an Encyclopædia, though the subjects will not be divided into fragments, or scattered over many volumes; each subject being treated with fulness and completeness, and its information brought up to the present time. ”

“ An annotated multidisciplinary guide to reference works published through 2004 that are important to research in the Victorian period (1832–1900) in Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire. The 957 entries are organized by ascending date of publication in seven classified divisions: guides and bibliographies; union lists, catalogs, and guides to collections; manuscripts and archives; guides to museums and collections; general reference works; multidisciplinary reference works; works devoted to a specific discipline (including book arts, literature and language, and theater and drama) . ”

“ My standpoint is that of the user, not the custodian, of books, and of the user of historical books in particular. There is no branch of knowledge more dependent upon bibliography than is history. The natural sciences, for example, get their bibliographies through current journals and their original materials in the laboratory, while the student of history must not only cover current literature thoroughly but is entirely dependent upon bibliographies to guide him to the primary sources of his subject of study. ”

“ Seriously to examine an encyclopædic system, that touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at least one biological speculation of astounding audacity that could be examined in nothing less than a treatise. ”

“ The ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ the ‘English Encyclopædia,’ and the other great digests of human knowledge, in consequence of their high price, are accessible only to a few. In such works no special provision is made for supplying short and comprehensive information regarding individual words, arranged in their alphabetical order, of the kind most likely to be required by the great mass of general readers. ”

“ The object of classification is to bring order out of confusion, and to arrange the great mass of books in science and literature of which every library is composed, so that those on related subjects should be as nearly as possible brought together. Let us suppose a collection of some hundred thousand volumes, in all branches of human knowledge, thrown together without any classification or catalogue, on the tables, the shelves, and the floor of an extensive reading-room. ”

“ The fact that the unworked mass of modern information through excavations is so great as to put off for a long time still a systematic treatise, has led to the plan of publishing these essays and addresses from time to time as completed and in uniform style. Although written for very different audiences and in various methods, each is an attempt to gather information not generally accessible and to be, so far as it goes, either a contribution to knowledge or to the method of knowledge, a sort of preliminary report or investigation in the field, pending full and systematic report. ”

“ By the bye, what a strange abuse has been made of the word encyclopaedia! It signifies, properly, grammar, logic, rhetoric, and ethics and metaphysics, which last, explaining the ultimate principles of grammar—log., rhet., and eth.—formed a circle of knowledge. * * * To call a huge unconnected miscellany of the "omne scibile", in an arrangement determined by the accident of initial letters, an encyclopaedia, is the impudent ignorance of your Presbyterian bookmakers. Good night! ”

“ THE word encyclopædia was first used by the Greeks, not for a book, but for a system of instruction in the whole circle of learning. Knowledge in their time was still so limited in extent that it could be thought of as taught by one man and covered in a single educational curriculum. ”

“ Books are in all languages and treat of subjects as multitudinous as the topics of human thought." A good [Pg 3] cataloguer should be learned in the history of all literary, scientific, religious, philosophical, economic, and political movements of all ages and all countries, and especially must he be abreast of the times in a knowledge of men and things, literary, scientific, and otherwise. ”

“ The Festschriften list by fields of knowledge classifies the collections in 17 fields of knowledge, including general; book, documentation, and communication; linguistics and literary studies; art and culture; and folklore and ethnology. The subject index is a keyword index, in German with English and French cross-references, to titles of contributions. The keyword index lists, by field of knowledge, the headings used in the subject index. The author index is an index of contributors listed in the Festschriften entries. ”

“ Every part indeed contains an interesting collection of Philosophical Disquisitions, Scientific Treatises, and articles on History and Biography, by the most eminent authors in these several departments, each of them respectively embracing the newest discoveries, the most recent improvements, or the latest information, which the progress of knowledge has supplied. ”

“ In the form of an Encyclopaedia, the science has no room for a detailed exposition of particulars, and must be limited to setting forth the commencement of the special sciences and the notions of cardinal importance in them. ”

“ Owing to the great development of scientific literature, the task of the Society in continuing the catalogue, even in its present form, is rapidly increasing in difficulty. At the same time it is clear that the progress of science would be greatly helped by, indeed, almost demands, the compilation of a catalogue which should aim at completeness, and should contain the titles of scientific publications, whether appearing in periodicals or independently. ”

“ The plan on which the work is formed, was to select only the subjects on which it is important that a people, who feel the value of sound education, should be well informed. The minutiæ of biography, topography, scientific technicalities, and other matters to which there may be only need for occasional reference, are dismissed, and thus what usually fills the greater part of an Encyclopædia is at once got rid of. ”

“ At the same time the enormous activity of the authors of the Encyclopedia began to turn popular attention towards physical rather than towards mental science, and to the research of material rather than of moral truth. ”

“ For he made the springs of learning—the innumerable Archives—the priceless manuscripts, the half-million of printed books gathered in his own halls of study, mingle their currents for every scholar, of whatever country or creed, who thirsted for the river of learning, strewn with golden sands for discoverers. ”

“ Councilman has prepared articles on physical education, biology, and eugenics. All the statistical matter has been brought up to the latest possible date, so that, in respect to correspondence to the facts as they are at the present moment, the Encyclopædia can claim to be the most complete work of reference of its sort in existence.
The nature and amount of knowledge with which a man can get through life has varied enormously according to time and circumstances. ”

“ Entries are organized alphabetically in 11 variously classified divisions: reference works and collections of essays; primary sources and scholarship on them (including chronicles, biography and hagiography, and constitutional and administrative history) ; general and political history (including secular biography and Vikings) ; constitutional and administrative history; ecclesiastical history; social and economic history; science, technology, and agriculture; place and personal names; numismatics; archaeology; and fine arts, arts, and crafts (including manuscripts) . ”