Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

In all hypotheses as to the more remote destiny of literature, we can but be struck by the precariousness of its existence. It is art imperishable and ever-changing material. A fire once extinguished perhaps half the world's literature, and struck thousands from the list of authors. The forgetfulness of mankind in the mysterious mediæval age; diminished by more than half the world of books. There are many books which surely, and either rapidly or slowly, resolve themselves into the elements, but the process cannot be seen. A whole army of books perishes with every revolution of taste. And yet the amount of current writing surpasses the strength of man's intellect or the length of his years. Surely, the press is very much of a nuisance as well as a blessing. Its products are getting very much in the way, and the impulse of the world is too strong to allow itself to be clogged by them. Something must be done.

Among possibilities, let the following be suggested. The world may perhaps return from unsymbolical to symbolical writing. There is a science older than anything but shadowy traditions, and immemorially linked with religion, poetry, and art. It is the almost forgotten science of symbolism. Symbols, as compared with letters, are a higher and more potent style of expression. They are the earthly shadows of eternal truth. It is the language of the fine arts, of painting, sculpture, the stage,—it will be the language of life, when, rising in the scale of being, we shall return from the dead sea of literature to the more energetic algebra of symbolical meanings. In these, the forms of the reason and of Nature come into visible harmony; the hopes of man find their shadows in the struggles of the universe, and the lights of the spirit cluster myriad-fold around the objects of Nature. Let Phœnician language be vivified into the universal poetry of symbolism, and thought would then become life, instead of the ghost of life. Current literature would give way to a new and true mythology; authors and editors would suffer a transformation similar to that of type-setters into artists, and of newsboys into connoisseurs; and the figures of a noble humanity would fill the public mind, no longer confused and degraded by the perpetual vision of leaden and unsuggestive letters. From that time prose would be extinct, and poetry would be all in all. History would renew its youth,—would find, after the struggles, attainments, and developments of its manhood, that there is after all nothing wiser in thought, no truer law, than the instincts of childhood.

Or, again: improvements have already been made which promise as an ultimate result to transform the largest library into a miniature for the pocket. Stenography may yet reach to a degree that it will be able to write folios on the thumb-nail, and dispose all the literature of the world comfortably in a gentleman's pocket, before he sets out on his summer excursion. The contents of vast tomes, bodies of history and of science, may be so reduced that the eye can cover them at a glance, and the process of reading be as rapid as that of thought The mind, instead of wearying of slow perusal, would have to spur its lightning to keep pace with the eye. Many books are born of mere vagueness and cloudiness of thought. All such, when thus compressed into their reality, would go out in eternal night. There is something overpowering in the conception of the high pressure to which life in all its departments may some time be brought. The mechanism of reading and writing would be slight. The mental labor of comprehending would be immense. The mind, instead of being subdued, would be spurred, by what it works in. We are now cramped and checked by the overwhelming amount of linguistic red-tape in which we have to operate; but then men, freed from these bonds, the husks of thought almost all thrown away, would be purer, live faster, do greater, die younger. What magnificent physical improvements, we may suppose, will then aid the powers of the soul! The old world would then be subdued, nevermore to strike a blow at its lithe conqueror, man. The department of the newspaper, with inconceivable photographic and telegraphic resources, may then be extended to the solar or the stellar systems, and the turmoils of all creation would be reported at our breakfast-tables. Men would rise every morning to take an intelligible account of the aspects and the prospects of the universe.

Or, once more: shall we venture into the speculative domain of the philosophy of history, and give the rationale of our times? What is the divine mission of the great marvel of our age, namely, its periodical and fugitive literature? The intellectual and moral world of mankind reforms itself at the outset of new civilizations, as Nature reforms itself at every new geological epoch. The first step toward a reform, as toward a crystallization, is a solution. There was a solvent period between the unknown Orient and the greatness of Greece, between the Classic and the Middle Ages,—and now humanity is again solvent, in the transition from the traditions which issued out of feudalism to the novelty of democratic crystallization. But as the youth of all animals is prolonged in proportion to their dignity in the scale of being, so is it with the children of history. Destiny is the longest-lived of all things. We are not going to accomplish it all at once. We have got to fight for it, to endure the newspapers in behalf of it. We are in a place where gravitation changing goes the other way. For the first time, all reigning ideas now find their focus in the popular mind. The giant touches the earth to recover his strength. History returns to the people. After two thousand years, popular intelligence is again to be revived. And under what new conditions? We live in a telescopic, microscopic, telegraphic universe, all the elements of which are brought together under the combined operation of fire and water, as erst, in primitive Nature, vulcanic and plutonic forces struggled together in the face of heaven and hell to form the earth. The long ranges of history have left with us one definite idea: it is that of progress, the intellectual passion of our time. All our science demonstrates it, all our poetry sings it. Democracy is the last term of political progress. Popular intelligence and virtue are the conditions of democracy. To produce these is the mission of periodical literature. The vast complexities of the world, all knowledge and all purpose, are being reduced in the crucible of the popular mind to a common product. Knowledge lives neither in libraries nor in rare minds, but in the general heart. Great men are already mythical, and great ideas are admitted only so far as we, the people, can see something in them. By no great books or long treatises, but by a ceaseless flow of brevities and repetitions, is the pulverized thought of the world wrought into the soul. It is amazing how many significant passages in history and in literature are reproduced in the essays of magazines and the leaders of newspapers by allusion and illustration, and by constant iteration beaten into the heads of the people. The popular mind is now feeding upon and deriving tone from the best things that literary commerce can produce from the whole world, past and present. There is no finer example of the popularization of science than Agassiz addressing the American people through the columns of a monthly magazine. Of the popular heart which used to rumble only about once in a century the newspapers are now the daily organs. They are creating an organic general mind, the soil for future grand ideas and institutes. As the soul reaches a higher stage in its destiny than ever before, the scaffolding by which it has risen is to be thrown aside. The quality of libraries is to be transferred to the soul. Spiritual life is now to exert its influence directly, without the mechanism of letters,—is going to exert itself through the social atmosphere,—and all history and thought are to be perpetuated and to grow, not in books, but in minds.