The ideals of the Republic of Letters as a community thus come out in journals, both in their own statements of purpose in prefaces and introductions, and in their actual contents. Just as one goal of a "commerce de lettres" was to inform two people, the goal of the journal was to inform many. In acting out this public role in the Republic of Letters, journals became a personification of the group as a whole. Attitudes of both journalists and readers suggest that a literary journal was regarded as in some sense an ideal member of the Republic of Letters.