The Atlantic Monthly | Page 5

along the infinite procession of writers. The process
reverts with every new edition, and eddies mingle with eddies in the
motley march of history. Its story may be traced in martyrdoms of the
flesh, in weary hours, strange experiences, unhappy tempers, restless
struggles, unrequited triumphs,--in the glare of midnight lamps, and of

wild, haggard eyes,--in sorrow, want, desolation, despair, and madness.
Born in sorrow, the book trails a pathway of sorrow through the ages.
And each book in the Parisian library stands for all this,--some that
were produced with tears having been always read for jest,--some that
were lightly written being now severe tasks for historians, antiquaries,
and source-mongers.
Suppose an old Egyptian, who in primæval Hierapolis incased his
thought in papyrus, to be able now to take a stroll into the Bibliothèque,
and to see what has become of his thought so far as there represented.
He would find that it had haunted mankind ever since. An alcove
would be filled with commentaries on it, and discussions as to where it
came from and what it meant. He would find it modifying and modified
by the Greeks, and reproduced by them with divers
variations,--extinguished by Christianity,--revived, with a new face,
among the theurgies and cabala of Alexandria; he would catch the
merest glimpse of it amid the Christian legends and credulities of the
Middle Ages,--but the Arabs would have kept a stronger hold on it; he
would see it in the background after the revival of learning, till,
gradually, as modern commerce opened the East, scholars, also,
discovered that there were wonders behind the classic nations; and
finally he would see how modern research, rushing back through
comparison of language-roots, through geological data, through
ethnological indications, through antiquarian discoveries, has rooted
out of the layers of ages all the history attendant upon its original
production. He would find the records of this long history in the library
around him. In every age, the thought, born of pain, has been
reproduced with travail. It did not do its mission at once, penetrate like
a ray of light into the heart of the race, and leave a chemical effect
which should last forever. No, the blood of man's spirit was not
purified,--only an external application was made, and that application
must be repeated with torture upon every generation. Was this designed
to be the function of thought, the mission of heavenly ideas?
This is the history of his thought in books. But let us conceive what
might have been its history but for the books;--how it might have been
written in the fibres of the soul, and lived in eternal reason, instead of

having been written on papyrus and involved in the realm of dead
matter. His idea, thrilling his own soul, would have revealed itself in
every particle and movement of his body; for "soul is form, and doth
the body make." Its first product would have been his own quivering,
animated, and animating personality. He would have impressed every
one of his associates, every one of whom would in turn have impressed
a new crowd, and thus the immortal array of influences would have
gone on. Not impressions on parchment, but impressions on the soul,
not letters, but thrills, would have been its result. Thus the magic of
personal influence of all kinds would have radiated from it in
omnipresent and colliding circlets forever, as the mighty imponderable
agents are believed to radiate from some hidden focal force. He would
trace his idea in the massive architecture and groping science of
Egypt,--in the elegant forms of worship, thought, institutes, and life
among the Greeks,--in the martial and systematizing genius of
Rome,--and so on through the ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages,
and the political and scientific ambitions of modern times. Its
operations have everywhere been chemical, not mechanical. It has lived,
not in the letter, but in the spirit. Never dropping to the earth, it has
been maintained as a shuttlecock in spiritual regions by the dynamics
of the soul. It has wrought itself into the soul, the only living and
immortal thing, and so the proper place for ideas. Its mode of
transmission has been by the suffusion of the eye, the cheek, the lip, the
manner, not by dead and unsymbolical letters. It has had life, and not
merely duration. It has been perpetuated in cordate, not in dactylate
characters. Its history must not be sought away from the circle of life,
but may be seen in the current generation of men. The man whom you
should meet on the street would be the product of all the ideas and
influences from the foundation of the world, and his slightest act would
reveal them all vital within him. The libraries, which form dead
recesses in the river of life,