Libraryful

The rude fact which editors forbear to mention (though they hint at it) is this: we have made libraryfuls of plans for destroying war before we know what war is.

All too easy, in these circumstances, for students to think that anthropology is nothing but a clutch of conjectures about the nature of humankind and a libraryful of books about the apparently strange customs of exotically different peoples.

Sex, the subject of librariesful of books, galleriesful of art and even, as we have seen, an occasional laboratoryful of science; the object of inquisitions and persecutions, of worship and reverence; the star of subliminal advertising, the glory of morning glory and the power of the sunflower, the Shaper of the lotus-yoni and mighty Priapus, the three-letter word that rhymes with hex—sex, created by evolution to speed up the dance (so say the Evolutionists), used by the Horned One to ensnare human souls (so say the Creationists).

Where other visitors exuded sentiment by the libraryful, Whymper remained cold, indifferent and judgemental.