(Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities)

Editors Note: The following are excerpts from a speech by William Ferris, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, delivered recently on the history of the encyclopedia and the NEH's emphasis on supporting this great human accomplishment.

The creation of encyclopedias is a noble tradition that dates back at least to Plato, who believed that to think better one must know all.

Aristotle and Plato are acknowledged as the originators of the encyclopedia as a means of providing comprehensive knowledge. Their fields of study included grammar, rhetoric, music, mathematics, geography, natural history and philosophy and were referred to in Latin as Humanitas. Together, these fields were also known as the "circle of knowledge" [or] Enkylios-paideia, from which the term encyclopedia derives.

The Great Mirror, completed in 1244, was an important medieval encyclopedia, whose author Vincent of Beauvais, argued that his work showed the world what it is and what it should become.

The contemporary view of the encyclopedia as a starting point from which we embark on a voyage of discovery is at least two centuries old. Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert's famed Encyclopedie, a landmark for the Age of Enlightenment, was important for both content and literary style, and it influenced both fiction and nonfiction in the 18^th and 19^th century French literature.

From Melville's detailing life on the Pequod to Whitman's celebration of every leaf of grass, American writers have focused on everyday life, what the French describe as "la vie quotidienne" and "sense of place." In so doing, they drop anchor in America's places within which they frame their characters. Just as Twain chooses that icon of American place, the Mississippi River, as home to Huck and Jim in Huckleberry Finn, we will similarly frame our wolds through the inventory of place in encyclopedias.

As we seek to rediscover America, to view her coat of many colors, her quiltlike maze of worlds, we turn to the encyclopedia as a time-honored tradition of scholarship. Encyclopedias offer a sweeping view of the landscape of knowledge within folk, popular and academic worlds. They appropriately embrace both classical Aristotelian and distinctly American approaches to knowledge and continue our Jeffersonian passion for cataloging detail.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has long supported encyclopedias that explore both modern and historic experiences, both American and international worlds. Just as we have supported tens of thousands of scholars and allowed them to deepen and sharpen their intellectual tools, to share their resources with the public, we will harness their talents as we create encyclopedias that will focus their gaze state by state, region by region, city by city. Together they will build a window through which we can view the nation's experience and share it with the globe. We will create a comprehensive inventory of our nation's history and culture, both past and present, and in so doing, we will build and secure her future.