ource of enjoyment for
those who will make use of them in order to give voice to the thoughts
of their favourite author.

Will literature lose by it? Will the poet be less a poet after having
worked out of doors or helped with his hands to multiply his work? Will
the novelist lose his knowledge of human nature after having rubbed
shoulders with other men in the forest or the factory, in the laying out
of a road or on a railway line? Can there be two answers to these
questions?

Maybe some books will be less voluminous; but then, more will be said on
fewer pages. Maybe fewer waste-sheets will be published; but the matter
printed will be more attentively read and more appreciated. The book
will appeal to a larger circle of better educated readers, who will be
more competent to judge.

Moreover, the art of printing, that has so little progressed since
Gutenberg, is still in its infancy. It takes two hours to compose in
type what is written in ten minutes, but more expeditious methods of
multiplying thought are being sought after and will be discovered.[6]

What a pity every author does not have to take his share in the printing
of his works! What progress printing would have already made! We should
no longer be using movable letters, as in the seventeenth century.

III

Is it a dream to conceive a society in which--all having become
producers, all having received an education that enables them to
cultivate science or art, and all having leisure to do so--men would
combine to publish the works of their choice, by contributing each his
share of manual work? We have already hundreds of learned, literary, and
other societies; and these societies are nothing but voluntary groups of
men, interested in certain branches of learning, and associated for the
purpose of publishing their works. The authors who write for the
periodicals of these societies are not paid, and the periodicals, apart
from a limited number of copies, are not for sale; they are sent gratis
to all quarters of the globe, to other societies, cultivating the same
branches of learning. This member of the Society may insert in its
review a one-page note summarizing his observations; another may publish
therein an extensive work, the results of long years of study; while
others will confine themselves to consulting the review as a
starting-point for further research. It does not matter: all these
authors and readers are associated for the production of works