The Atlantic Monthly | Page 9

wide-awake for thought,--the atmosphere is too bright for intellectual
achievements. We have the wonders and sensations of a day; but where
are the fathomless profundities, the long contemplations, and the silent
solemnities of life? The newspapers are marvels of mental industry.
They show how much work can be done in a day, but they never last
more than a day. Sad will it be when the genius of ephemerality has
invaded all departments of human actions and human motives!
Farewell then to deep thoughts, to sublime self-sacrifice, to heroic

labors for lasting results! Time is turned into a day, the mind knows
only momentary impressions, the weary way of art is made as short as a
turnpike, and the products of genius last only about as long as any
mood of the weather. Bleak and changeable March will rule the year in
the intellectual heavens.
What symbol could represent this matchless embodiment of all the
activities, this tremendous success, this frenzied public interest? A
monster so large, and yet so quick,--so much bulk combined with so
much readiness,--reaching so far, and yet striking so often! Who can
conceive that productive state of mind in which some current fact is all
the time whirling the universe about it? Who can understand the mania
of the leader-writer, who never thinks of a subject without discovering
the possibility of a column concerning it,--who never looks upon his
plate of soup without mentally reviewing in elaborate periods the whole
vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms?
But what is the advantage of newspapers? Forsooth, popular
intelligence. The newspaper is, in the first place, the legitimate and
improved successor of the fiery cross, beacon-light, signal-smoking
summit, hieroglyphic mark, and bulletin-board. It is, in addition to this,
a popular daily edition and application of the works of Aristotle, St.
Thomas Aquinas, Lord Bacon, Vattel, and Thomas Jefferson. On one
page it records items, on the other it shows the relations between those
items and the highest thought. Yet the whole circle is accomplished
daily. The journal is thus the synopticized, personified, incarnate
madness of the day,--for to-day is always mad, and becomes a thing of
reason only when it becomes yesterday. A proper historical fact is one
of the rarest shots in the journalist's bag, as time is sure to prove. If we
had newspaper-accounts of the age of Augustus, the chances are that no
other epoch in history would be so absolutely problematical, and
Augustus himself would be lucky, if he were not resolved into a myth,
and the journal into sibylline oracles. The dissertational department is
equally faulty; for to first impressions everything on earth is
chameleon-like. The Scandinavian Divinities, the Past, the Present, and
the Future, could look upon each other, but neither of them upon
herself. But in the journal the Present is trying to behold itself; the same

priestess utters and explains the oracle. Thus the journal is the immortal
reproduction of the jour des dupes. The editors are like the newsboys,
shouting the news which they do not understand.
The public mind has given itself up to it. It claims the right to
pronounce all the newspapers very bad, but has renounced the privilege
of not reading them. Every one is made particeps criminis in the course
of events. Nothing takes place in any quarter of the globe without our
assistance. We have to connive at omne scibile. About everything
natural and human, infernal and divine, there is a general consultation
of mankind, and we are all made responsible for the result. Yet this
constant interruption of our private intellectual habits and interests is
both an impertinence and a nuisance. Why send us all the crudities?
Why call upon us till you know what you want? Why speak till you
have got your brain and your mouth clear? Why may we not take the
universe for granted when we get up in the morning, instead of
proceeding directly to measure it over again? Once a year is often
enough for anybody but the government to hear anything about India,
China, Patagonia, and the other flaps and coat-tails of the world. Let
the North Pole never be mentioned again till we can melt the icebergs
by a burning mirror before we start. Don't report another asteroid till
the number reaches a thousand; that will be time enough for us to
change our peg. Let us hear nothing of the small speeches, but
Congress may publish once a week a bulletin of what it has done. The
President and Cabinet may publish a bulletin, not to exceed five lines,
twice a week, or on rare occasions and in a public emergency once a
day. The right, however, shall be reserved to the people to prohibit the
Cabinet from saying anything more aloud on a particular public