splendour and popular misery. In one direction we may see means by which intelligent recreation may be supposed capable of vast developments. Already the study of the psychical side of man has been the means of extraordinary discoveries. Our knowledge of hypnotism, suggestion, thought-transference and similar psychological wonders, obscured though it has unhappily been by charlatanism and the importation into the subject of irrelevant follies, has great promise for the future man, whose psychical faculties will unquestionably develop at the expense of his animal instincts. It is hardly possible to limit our conception of the means by which thought will be communicated in the next century, but we may see just where the change will probably come. A printed essay, such as this, is obviously a successive translation of thought into words (in the brain), then of the words into letters, and then of letters into type, which is picked up by the eye, retranslated into words by one part of the brain, and finally transmuted into thought again in another part. If some method can be discovered of abolishing one or more of these processes, thought can be conveyed from brain to brain at an enormously increased pace, and with a delicacy of which we have no present conception. This development is not so inconceivable as it at first appears. We know as yet almost nothing of the processes by which (for instance) vibration, accepted by the ear as sound, is, in the brain-cells behind the ear, converted into thought. Speech and writing are purely conventional devices. If, instead of using these conventions, we can learn to transmit ideas immediately from brain to brain, the next step may be an extraordinary development of intellectual pleasures, in the case of those individuals whose tastes are capable of thus being ministered to. But to say this is not to imply that the ordinary means of human intercommunication will be dispensed with. For most occasions, and for all but the subtlest and most refined necessities of thought, no doubt books, newspapers and letters will remain a feature of everyday life--though of course with such modifications as the progress of the century will have called forth. The future of the newspaper in particular is a subject of such great importance that it requires to be discussed in detail. CHAPTER V THE NEWSPAPER OF THE FUTURE, AND THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSPAPER Suspending, as hardly within the bounds of manageable conjecture, any attempt to follow up the suggestion with which the previous chapter concluded, we can very easily imagine the lines on which newspapers such as we know are likely to develop mechanically. A number of processes already existing in embryo can be shown to be capable of very great extension; and several discoveries which an intelligent anticipation is capable of predicting could, and doubtless will, be applied to journalism.