Marshall County Democrat. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1855-1859, 1858-06-10
The Triumph of Movable Types.

every feeling of the heart, from the moment of
its birth in the mind, tends TO outward expression
All souls are sympathetic All thought burns for
the embrace Of other intelects Mental action
is communicative fire, or like light infinitely radi-
ant. But here nature might seem to impose q bar
against all possible manifestation. The interior
individuality of the personal unit is altogether i'm
penetrable to the senses. There can be no di-
rect intercourse of minds. The soul is the true
Egyptian Isis, whose veil no mortal hand shall ev-
er raise. The most profound ideas of abstraction
the most gorgeous pictures of creative fancy, the
purest impulses of duty and devotion, the dearest
dreams of unfading fondness, all come and go in
the cryptic recesses of the brain or bosom, invisi
bic to the most vigilant eye.
How, then, shall intercommunication be effected
between these sons, thus solitary thus isolated by
impossible CULTS of time and space, yet yearning to
be unitedl How shall the divine Eros and his beau
tiful Phyche ever gaze upon another, while
separated by this depth of utter darkness7 Thus,
and not otherwise: Omniscient nature spans the
sunless chasm with rainbowed bridge of signs,
over which the winged thought from brain to brain,
the angel loves from heat, may flash like the
lightning. And that bridge in space is language.
But man desires not only outward representation
for all that deeply moves the heart withn he seeks
also to attain an utturance which shall endure
throughout the ages. He is not content with mere
IL leaving footprints on the sands of time, to be
swept off by the rising tides, washed all away by
the rains of heaven. He would stamp the traces Of
his intellectual progression eternal crystals
torn from the bosom of the mountains, to last, like
them, until the final fire. The heir of immortal be-
ing is not satisfied with piercing the realms of peo
pied space. He must make his voice heard far
across the sea of distant centuries with sefrepeat
ing echoes, ike reverbations of thunder in the
Andes What hand, then, shall have the magic
might to bridge over this immeasurablc abyss of
years? Space may be spanned because it is stable,
though void; but who shall project arches across
that shoreless ocean of ages, where the storms Of
change and the wild waves of chance beat and
break forever? Such was the great probleni-the
master problem of the human mind, from the NOR
nng of the young world during unknown and un-
imaginable cycles of duration And as countless
were the futile schemes invented for its solution
The device of ideographic signs was grand step
in the right direction. To that atsucceeded phonetic
characters traced papyrus or parchment, and in
dicating the sounds of the living voice in words
And thus the philosophers and poets of the ancient
days were enabled to embody in luminous external
shapes the inspired air they breathed in speech;
while the vain lords of empire chiseled the story
of their purple pomps on soaring column and mass
,c ., 81
scattered rays of intellect and imagination
condensed, and, as it mightbe said, crystalzed in
in splendid jewels to keep the earth in light after
the orbs had set from which that effugence pro-
ceeded. But these rare and radiant gems of finest
thought were costly as the richest diamonds, and
therefore Only for the few; while the multitudinous
children of common toll labored on, ever, in the
products of the antique world, well as of the
middle ages, might well be compared to remote
stars dispersed in the vault Of heaven; shining
brightly enough on the serene mountain SUBMITS,
and gliding the tops of the talest trees yet with
out power to penetrate the low-lying valleys, or
send one pale b,am through the thick foliage
which overshadowed the great wilderness of hu
manity.
Hence, there resulted an incessant war betwixt
the seminal principles of intellectual day and dark
ness-betwixt the brute forces of barbarian instinct
and the fine activities of civilization. But as all
civilization tends less to debilitate the mere
physical energies, and as the social science of an
tiquity knew no method of compensation to correct
or mitigate the effects of that inevitable tendency,
the issue of the conflict could not be long doubt
full. The iron masses of savage muscle predomi-
mated over the subtle powers of cultivated mind,
and dashed all its wealth of glttering gems back
again into the pit of darkness. Then fell palace,
and tower, and scuptured stone, with the most SUI
perb empire the world ever saw. Then perished
parchment, and paphyrus, and pictorial symbol,
with their inestimable fancies and grand thoughts
Lo. the very languages of the classic world are,
for season, lost. The highway of phonetic signs
betwixt the past and future, is broken up and all
the beautiful urns of memory cnshrining gold-dust
of the immortal dead are precipitated into the
lethean ocean. We know that this terrible fatal
ty happened to the species once; but how often
it been repeated before in the nameless cycles of
unrecorded years, we can not even so much as
family imagine However, the truth is certain =
that no sagacty could discover the art of throwig
bridge for the passage of ieas over the dark and
stormy gulf of ages, until the Plodding perseve-
rance of some blue-eyed German Goth detected
the arch-wizards wonder Of magic for transmiss-
ion that belongs only to movable types. That was
the proudestd day in the history of human kind
Stretching away into the depths of an endless du-
ration, royal road was opened, brilliant and
beautiful as the Iris yet solid and lasting as the
granite of the primitive hills. And now, by that
enc glorious invention, the race has realized the
sublime conception of Pascal. Humanity his be-
come one grand man always living and incessant-
ly learning. The thought that leaps like live eec-
tricty from the battery of apowerful brain, light
ems around the globe, and changes into a polar
star to be the guide, in science, morals, govern
ment, of all posterity. 49,
1t is true that civilization has its evils and dan
gers of no ordinary character attend the various
uses of the enchanter's art, by which the golden
germs of mental culture are thus infinitely re-
produced and disseminated. Nor can we conjec-
ture what tremendous trials of description alto