The Atlantic Monthly | Page 3

own time is superficial in proportion to the

thickness of the ages. But neither the genius of man, nor his length of
days, has had an increase corresponding to that of the realm of
knowledge, the requirements of reading, and the conditions of
intelligence. The multiplied attractions only crowd and obstruct the
necessarily narrow line of duty, possibility, and destiny. Life threatens
to be extinguished by its own shadow, by the débris kept in the current
by countless tenacious records. Its essence escapes to heaven or into
new forms, but its ghosts still walk the earth in print. Like that mythical
serpent which advanced only as it grew in length, so knowledge spans
the whole length of the ages. Some philosopher conceived of history as
the migration and growth of reason throughout time, culminating in
successive historical ideas. He, however, supposed that the idea of
every age had nothing to do with any preceding age; it had passed
through whatsoever previous stages, had been somewhat modified by
them, contained in itself all that was best in them, was improved and
elevated at every new epoch; but it had no memory, never looked
backward, and was an ever rolling sphere, complete in itself, leaving no
trail behind. Human life, under the discipline of letters and common
schools, is not thus Hegelian, but advances under the boundless
retrospection of literature. And yet this is probably divine philosophy.
It is probable that the faculty of memory belongs to man only in an
immature state of development, and that in some future and happier
epoch the past will be known to us only as it lives in the present; and
then for the first time will Realism in life take the place of Nominalism.
The largest library in the world, the Bibliothèque Impériale of Paris, (it
has been successively, like the adventurous and versatile throne of
France, Royale, Nationale, and Impériale,) contains very nearly one
million of books, the collected fruits of all time. Consider an average
book in that collection: how much human labor does it stand for? How
much capital was invested originally in its production, and how much
tribute of time and toil does it receive per annum? Regarding books as
intellectual estate, how much does it cost mankind to procure and keep
up an average specimen? What quantity of human resources has been
originally and consecutively sunk in the Parisian library? How much of
human time, which is but a span, and of human emotion and thought,
which are sacred and not to be carelessly thrown away, lie latent

therein?
The estimate must be highly speculative. Some books have cost a
lifetime and a heartbreak; others have been written at leisure in a week,
and without an emotion. Some are born from the martyrdom of a
thinker to fire the genius of a populace; others are the coruscations of
joy, and have a smile for their immortal heir. Some have made but the
slightest momentary ripple in human affairs; others, first gathering
eddies about themselves, have swept forward in grand currents,
engrossing for centuries whole departments of human energy.
Thousands publish and are forgotten before they die. Spinoza published
after his death and is not yet understood.
We will begin with the destined bibliomacher at the time of his
assumption of short clothes. The alphabet is his first professional
torture, and that only ushers him upon the gigantic task of learning to
read and write his own language. Experience shows that this miracle of
memory and associative reason may be in the main accomplished by
the time he is eight years old. Thus far in his progress towards
book-making he has simply got his fingers hold of the pen. He has next
to run the gauntlet of the languages, sciences, and arts, to pass through
the epoch of the scholar, with satchel under his arm, with pale cheek,
an eremite and ascetic in the religion of Cadmus. At length, at about
twenty years of age, he leaves the university, not a master, but a
bachelor of liberal studies. But thus far he has laid only the foundation,
has acquired only rudiments and generalities, has only served his
apprenticeship to letters. God gave mind and nature, but art has
furnished him a new capacity and a new world,--the capacity to read,
and the world of books. He has simply acquired a new nature, a
psychological texture of letters, but the artificial tabula rasa has yet to
be filled. Twenty obstetrical years have at last made him a literary
animal, have furnished him the abstract conditions of authorship; but he
has yet his life to save, and his fortune to make in literature. He is born
into the mystic fraternity of readers and writers, but the special studies
and experiences which fit him for