Notes

On December 16, 1947, the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute dedicated its library to DR. A. A. BRILL, designated by and in honor of his name: THE ABRAHAM A. BRILL LIBRARY. Dr. Sandor Lorand, President, presided, and the dedicatory address was read for Dr. Clarence P. Oberndorf.

'Mr. President, Dr. Brill, Members and Friends of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute:

'Today we are gathered together to dedicate a library. It is exceptional among the libraries of learning in that almost none of the books which it shelters—some fifteen hundred volumes—could have been written fifty years ago. It is the precious heritage of man which distinguishes and dignifies him above all other species in that he enjoys a capacity to think and the ability to grow and change in his thinking. The chatter of monkeys has probably remained the same since first they swung freely from branch to branch in the primeval forest. The sweet note of the skylark has not changed since the first skylark poured forth its "full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art". But man's expression is not static. What he perceives or how he perceives it and the progression of his thought have been recorded in the written word—itself one of the most remarkable achievements of his ingenuity and thinking. These thoughts are preserved for us to ponder, from the Rosetta Stone and the papyri of the Egyptians, the scrolls and bound manuscripts of medieval times, to the printed books which Gutenberg's press made possible since the fifteenth century. From that time, the results of thought became accessible to an ever increasing number of people for their instruction, enlightenment and entertainment, and libraries multiplied.

'With every new thought a pattern of controversy repeats itself between those who are willing to examine and test the new and those who find safety and reassurance in the old and familiar. The right to heresy has ever been challenged and the originators and protagonists of th