al treatise,
Du theatre ou Nouvel Essai sur l'art dramatique (1773).]

The literary records of the past had been almost all deliberately
destroyed by fire. It was found expedient to do away with useless
and pernicious books which only obscured truth or contained perpetual
repetitions of the same thing. A small closet in the public library
sufficed to hold the ancient books which were permitted to escape the
conflagration, and the majority of these were English. The writings of
the Abbe de Saint-Pierre were placed next those of Fenelon. "His pen was
weak, but his heart was sublime. Seven ages have given to his great and
beautiful ideas a just maturity. His contemporaries regarded him as a
visionary; his dreams, however, have become realities."

The importance of men of letters as a social force was a favourite theme
of Mercier, and in A.D. 2440 this will be duly recognised. But the State
control which weighed upon them so heavily in 1770 is not to be entirely
abolished. There is no preventive censorship to hinder publication, but
there are censors. There are no fines or imprisonment, but there are
admonitions. And if any one publishes a book defending principles which
are considered dangerous, he is obliged to go about in a black mask.

There is a state religion, Deism. There is probably no one who does
not believe in God. But if any atheist were discovered, he would be put
through a course of experimental physics. If he remained obdurate in his
rejection of a "palpable and salutary truth," the nation would go into
mourning and banish him from its borders.

Every one has to work, but labour no longer resembles slavery. As there
are no monks, nor numerous domestics, nor useless valets, nor work-men
employed on the production of childish luxuries, a few daily hours of
labour are sufficient for the public wants. Censors inquire into men's
capacities, assign tasks to the unemployed, and if man be found fit for
nothing but the consumption of food he is banished from the city.

These are some of the leading features of the ideal future to which
Mercier's imagination reached. He did not put it forward as a final
term. Later ages, he said, will go further, for "where can the
perfectibility of man stop, armed with geometry and the mechanical
arts and chemistry?" But in his scanty prophecies of what science might
effect he showed curiously little resource. The truth is that this
had not much interest for him, and he did not se