But in that quarter in which it is superficially cultivated the
intellect of this age is properly opposed in any just comparison to an
intellect without any culture at all:--leaving the deep soils out of the
comparison, the shallow ones of the present day would in any preceding one
have been barren wastes. Of this our modern encyclopedias are the best
proof. For whom are they designed, and by whom used?--By those who in a
former age would have gone to the fountain heads? No, but by those who in
any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters at all.
Encyclopedias are the growth of the last hundred years; not because those
who were formerly students of higher learning have descended, but because
those who were below encyclopaedias have ascended. The greatness of the
ascent is marked by the style in which the more recent encyclopaedias are
executed: at first they were mere abstracts of existing books--well or ill
executed: at present they contain many _original_ articles of great
merit. As in the periodical literature of the age, so in the
encyclopaedias it has become a matter of ambition with the publishers to
retain the most eminent writers in each several department. And hence it
is that our encyclopaedias now display one characteristic of this age--the
very opposite of superficiality (and which on other grounds we are well
assured of)--viz. its tendency in science, no less than in other
applications of industry, to extreme subdivision.
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