From an essay on “Émile de Girardin.”

WHEN I take a newspaper in my hand, and glance over its columns; when I consider the diversity of its matter and the riches of its contents, I cannot help feeling a rapturous pride in my epoch, and a thrill of compassion toward the ages which were unacquainted with this powerful channel for human intelligence, this most extraordinary of human creations.

  I can comprehend societies without steam engines, without the electric telegraph, without the thousand marvels which modern industry has sown in the triumphal path of progress, adorned by so many immortal monuments. But I cannot understand a society without this immense volume of the daily press, in which is registered by a legion of writers, who should be held in honor by the people, our troubles, our vacillations, our apprehensions, and the degree of perfection at which we have arrived in the work of realizing an ideal of justice upon the face of the earth.

  I can understand the monastic life, even to the isolation of a man who renounces the intellectual pleasures of society and the delight to be found in family affection, in order to consecrate himself to religion, to science, to charity, to meditation, to idleness, if he will, in one of those moral islands which we call monasteries. But I cannot understand this man resigning the reading of newspapers, giving up his daily co-operation in thought with the brain of all humanity, his sympathy with the hearts of his fellows, the mingling of his life with the great ocean of human existence, his interest in the agitation of its waves by the breath of new ideas. The ancient Chinese had a powerful institution,—that of historians. Shut up in a palace surrounded by gardens, the Chinese historians devoted themselves in silence to the task of writing down daily events, with the severe majesty of the judges of those times, of the dispensers of immortality. Beside the celestial dynasty of emperors was placed this severe dynasty of tribunals. They formed something more than a magistracy—they were a priesthood; and they dealt with all as if they were the representatives of the human conscience, and the emissaries of the divine justice. Their ministry consisted in engraving on immortal pages, to be preserved as the heritage of generations, the most important acts of the empire. No people ever honored their priesthood as the Chinese, who have lived in perpetual infancy, honored these historians.

  I think that modern peoples ought in a similar manner to honor their journalists. For these exceptional witnesses know what rays of light cross each other on our horizon; these public judges prescribe rules which form the judgment of the human conscience upon all actions. The passion of parties is of small importance; without it perhaps we should not be able to comprehend this prodigious work, which, like all human works, necessitates the steam of a great passion to set it in motion. The studied silence upon some subjects matters little, nor the partiality shown on others, nor the injustice, even to falsehood, so often manifested; for from this battle of spiritual forces results the total life, as from the shadows we perceive the harmony of a picture. It would be better if we had not these evils, so we should be happier if we had not either physical infirmities or moral misfortunes; but it is as difficult to rectify society as nature, and its laws are as complicated as the mechanical laws of the universe, and at times as fatal. And it is a fatality of the social organism that progress encounters obstacles in the great efforts designed to advance it; the past, with its errors, rises against all kinds of advancement, and makes the utmost efforts to destroy it. But from the cloudy and intricate world of falsehood arises a luminous ether, which forms the world of truth. However, if all the different institutions of which people are so proud were one day called to judgment, and if each of them showed both the good and the evil they have done, perhaps not one of them could retire from the trial as pure as the press, and none would more justly merit a blessing from humanity.

  What a wonderful work is a newspaper—a work of art and science! Six ages have not been enough to complete the Cathedral of Cologne, and one day suffices to finish the immense labor of a newspaper. We are unable to measure the degrees of life, of light, of progress that are to be found in each leaf of the immortal book which forms the press. We find in a journal everything, from the notices relating to the most obscure individuals, to the speech which is delivered from the highest tribunal, and which affects all intelligences; from the passing thought excited by the account of a ball, to the criticism on those works of art destined to immortality. This marvelous sheet is the encyclopædia of our time; an encyclopædia which necessitates an incalculable knowledge—a knowledge whose power our generation cannot deny—a knowledge which is as the condensation of the learning of a century.

  When I picture to myself Athens, I fancy her resplendent with her legions of sculptors and poets; with her assemblies, where each discourse was a hymn; with her singers; with that theatre whence were visible the bright waves of the Mediterranean; with those processions in which Grecian virgins, crowned with flowers, danced to the music of the citherns; with those statues, which almost realized the perfect idea of plastic beauty; with those Olympic games, in which snowy steeds drew in gilded cars the players armed with lances, as Jupiter with his lightning; with her schools, in which were taught at the same time metaphysics, gymnastics, music, and geometry; with all her life, which was the divine worship of art and beauty! But, alas! all that luxury and civilization saddens me. It was worthless, in that it had no newspapers; and for the sake of the newspaper let us cease to be inhabitants of a city, and be citizens of the world.

  Laborers of the press, modest and obscure writers! You have never been able to measure the great importance of your occupation, because you live in the midst of it, and consider it almost as a portion of your own being. But, alas! without you the most illustrious personages would be lost, the most glorious works would be as bells sounding in space. You bear to each individual the sorrows of all others; you bring to the afflicted the hopes of all humanity. Your pens are like the electric wires, which unite the most distant regions of our planet. Your ideas resemble the atoms of air in which our souls respire; they are the moral atmosphere of the globe. It is necessary to weigh well all the gravity of such a ministry in order to exercise it with becoming grandeur and dignity. It is one of the most sublime works of which the human understanding is capable.