Note the seeming anomaly of a scientific age peculiarly credulous; the
ease with which any charlatan finds followers; the common readiness to
fall in with any theory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and
to accept the wildest notions of social reorganization. We should be
obliged to note also, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to
come to conclusions on inadequate evidence--a disposition usually due to
one-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the philosophic
habit.
Often children have only one book even of this sort, at which they are
kept until they learn it through by heart, and they have been heard to
"read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All these books
cultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are--the best of
them--only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to have any
sort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step is taken
in informing him of his relation to the world about him. His education
is not begun.
The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not say childish, for
that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyond description.
The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for any
purpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thus
encouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels has
become a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of the
silk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment on
individual looms at home.
An honest acceptance of the law of gravitation would banish many popular
delusions; a comprehension that something cannot be made out of nothing
would dispose of others; and the application of the ordinary principles
of evidence, such as men require to establish a title to property, would
end most of the remaining.
When the trash does not sell, the trash will not be produced, and those
who are only capable of supplying the present demand will perhaps find a
more useful occupation. It will be again evident that literature is not
a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers and patient training. When
people know how to read, authors will need to know how to write.