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§ 14. II. The next defect I observe in the Renascence ideal is this: it attributes to literature more direct power over common life than literature has ever had, or is ever likely to have.

I say direct power, for indirectly literature is one of the grand forces which act on all of us; but it acts on us through others, its most important function being to affect great intellects, the minds of those who think out and act out important changes. Its direct action on the mass of mankind is after all but insignificant. We have seen that literature consists in permanent forms of words, expressing the conceptions of individual minds; and these forms will be studied only by those who are interested in the conceptions or find pleasure in the mode in which they are expressed. Now the vast majority of ordinary people are without these inducements to literary study. They take a keen interest in everything connected with their relations and intimate friends, and a weaker interest in the thinkings and sayings and doings of every one else who is personally known to them; but as to the mental conceptions of those who lived in other times, or if now alive are not known even by sight, the ordinary person is profoundly indifferent to them; and of course delight in expression, as such, is out of the question. The natural consequence is that the habit of reading books is by no means common. Mark Pattison observes that there are few books to be found in most English middle-class homes, and he says: “The dearth of books is only the outward and visible sign of the mental torpor which reigns in those destitute regions” (see “Fortnightly Review,” November, 1877). I much doubt if he would have found more books in the middle-class homes of the Continent. There is only one kind of reading that is nearly universal—the reading of newspapers; and the newspaper lacks the element of permanence, and belongs to the domain of talk rather than of literature.