The Atlantic Monthly | Page 7

more and more; nought else was an object of pursuit; till at last the earth was covered with tomes, and for long ages now it has been buried beyond the reach of mortal. All forms of life were exterminated. Man himself survives only as a literary shadow. Each one writes a book, or a few books, and dies, vanishing into thin air. Such is life,--a hecatomb!"
But even if it be supposed that mind could survive the toil, and the earth the quantity of our accumulating books, there are other difficulties. There are other imperative limitations, beyond which the art of writing cannot go. Letters themselves limit the possibilities of literature. For there is only a certain number of letters. These letters are capable of only a certain number of combinations into words. This limited number of possible words is capable only of a certain number of arrangements. Conceive the effect when all these capabilities shall be exhausted! It will no longer be possible for a new thing to be said or written. We shall have only to select and repeat from the past. Writing shall be reduced to the making of extracts, and speaking to the making of quotations. Yet the condition of things would certainly be improved. As there is now a great deal of writing without thinking, so then thinking could go on without writing. A man would be obliged to think out and up to his result, as we do now; but whether his processes and conclusions were wise or foolish, he would find them written out for him in advance. The process of selection would be all. The immense amount of writing would cease. Authors would be extinct. Thinkers could find their ideas stated in the best possible way, and the most effective arguments in their favor. If this event seems at all unlikely to any one, let him only reflect on the long geological ages, and on the innumerable writings, short and long, now published daily,--from Mr. Buckle to the newspapers. Estimate everything in type daily throughout Christendom. If so much is done in a day, how much in a few decades of centuries? Surely, at our present rate, in a very conceivable length of time, the resources of two alphabets would be exhausted. And this may be the reason and providence in the amount of writing now going on,--to get human language written up. The earth is as yet not half explored, and its cultivation and development, in comparison with what shall some time be, have scarcely begun. Will not the race be blessed, when its two mortal foes, Nature and the alphabet, have been finally and forever subdued?
This necessary finiteness of literature may be illustrated in another way. An English mathematician of the seventeenth century applied the resources of his art to an enumeration of human ideas. He believed that he could calculate with rigorous exactness the number of ideas of which the human mind is susceptible. This number, according to him, (and he has never been disputed,) was 3,155,760,000. Even if we allowed a million of words to one idea, according to our present practice,--instead of a single word to an idea, which would seem reasonable,--still, all the possible combinations of words and ideas would finally be exhausted. The ideas would give out, to be sure, a million of times before the words; but the latter would meet their doom at last. All possible ideas would then be served up in all possible ways for all men, who could order them according to their appetites, and we could dispense with cooks ever after. The written word would be the finished record of all possible worlds, in gross and in detail.
But the problem whose solution has thus been attempted by desperate suggestions has, by changing its elements, nullified our calculation. We have been plotting to cast out the demon of books; and, lo! three other kindred demons of quarterlies, monthlies, and newspapers have joined fellowship with it, and our latter estate is worse than our first. Indeed, we may anticipate the speedy fossilization and extinction of books, while these younger broods alone shall occupy the earth. Our libraries are already hardly more than museums, they will soon be mausoleums, while all our reading is of the winged words of the hurried contributor. Some of the most intelligent and influential men in large cities do not read a book once a year. The Cadmean magic has passed from the hands of hierophants into those of the people. Literature has fallen from the domain of immortal thought to that of ephemeral speech, from the conditions of a fine to those of a mechanical art. The order of genius has been abolished by an all-prevailing popular opinion. The elegance and taste of patient culture have been