The Atlantic Monthly | Page 7

Man long enjoyed it, with wonderful fulness
and freshness of being. But a madness seized him; everybody wrote
books; the evil grew 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