The great thing is to stir up mind. Great events and favouring circumstances do this naturally, by self-acting and irresistible means; and literature is one of the spontaneous fruits of the stirring of mind they give rise to. And the work does not stop there; for literature re-acts on the mental activity which produced it. It stimulates to still greater exertions; and, what is more, it guides to right, and useful, and fruitful conclusions. Perhaps it is hopeless to attempt to get literature to do its work, when the conditions which are requisite for producing a literature are absent, but the attempt might be made. There is nothing else to do now. This process is seen clearly enough in history. Look at Athens. Its greatness produced its literature; and its literature supported and advanced its greatness. Public life, of course, at Athens was such that many things there gave increased power to literature; and some in a way acted as substitutes for it. The public assemblies, the administration of justice, the schools of philosophy, the theatres, were to the Athenians, to a great extent, what books and newspapers are to us. They were a machinery by which the thought and knowledge of those who, more or less to the purpose, could think, and who had knowledge, were brought into contact with the minds of all; so that all were put in the way of thinking, and of attaining knowledge for themselves; and were obliged, to some extent, to do it: and thus the thought and the knowledge of the best men became the thought and the knowledge of all, or were, at least, submitted to the attention of all. And so knowledge went on increasing, and thought went on achieving fresh conquests, and Greece became the Holy Land of mind. Every one can see how large a share in producing the mental activity of the Americans must be assigned to books and newspapers. Facts, and men’s thoughts about these facts, are each day laid before the minds of a greater proportion of the population in the United States than elsewhere. Take away this apparatus for awakening and guiding thought, and their wonderful mental activity would disappear. As it is, all the counteracting influences of the rough and hard life most of them have to live cannot repress it. Suppose as large a proportion of our own population could read, and that they were treated in the same way—that is to say, that an equal amount of seed was deposited in their minds, and an equal amount of light, air, and warmth poured in—then I doubt not but that we should see, down even to the lower strata of society, an equal amount of mental activity.