NOVELS AND NOVEL-READING.
"_Of making many books there is no end._" Eccl. xii, 12.
What is a NOVEL? A recent writer thus defines it: A novel is a
portraiture of "something new falling within the domain of fancy or
imagination, with its interest centering in love." If this be correct,
it would seem that a novel, as such, is neither good nor bad, but is the
one or the other according to its own individual character. To portray
something new is certainly not wrong if the portraiture be true, and
there be a good reason for the portrayal. There is a place, also, for
fancy and imagination in the legitimate operations of the mind; nor does
the fact that the interest centers in love necessarily condemn it. True
love, such as God designed to exist among the families of men, is a
golden chain which binds in the best and purest friendship known on
earth. Genuine, honest, rational love needs to be cultivated, not
rebuked and repressed. It needs the controlling and formative influences
of intelligence, reason, and religion, and may, therefore, be discussed
by the press and on the platform or even in the pulpit.
And yet novel-reading has become one of the great vices of our age.
Multitudes care for nothing but light reading. The bookstores abound
with works of fiction. The records of our public libraries show that
there are more readers in this department than any other--perhaps more
than in all the rest. The literature which finds its way into the hands
of our people, as they journey by land or water, is almost invariably
fictitious. Our weekly periodicals, secular and religious, often have
their serial story. Our Sunday school libraries have been overwhelmed by
the flood of weak and washy literature till scarce a vestige of sober
history or real biography shows itself above the surface of the wild
wilderness of waters. A whole generation of young people are growing up,
to whom solid books are unknown, to whom the great historic names of the
past are but a sound, and whose ignorance of the world of fact is poorly
compensated by their acquaintance with the world of dreams.
It is a rule in political economy that demand creates supply. As all
kinds of readers addict themselves to fiction, so all sorts of writers
press into this wide and productive field, and exhibit results of every
degree of badness, with now and then something of better quality. It is
not easy for the young to find their way through this labyrinth of good
and evil, the good little and the evil infinite. The safest rule, in
whose application the fewest mistakes will be made, is that of TOTAL
ABSTINENCE. To declare that all the wild fruit of a certain forest is
poisonous, and to prophecy the death of every one who eats a single
berry there, may be contrary to truth; nevertheless, if nine out of ten
of the kinds found there are deadly, and none but a well-taught observer
is able to distinguish between the good and the evil, the warning to be
given to the inexperienced is, "Touch not, taste not."
In regard to novels this is often the only available rule. But if we are
required to give more discriminating advice, there are four maxims which
are plain, and, if faithfully adhered to, will, I think, be found safe.
1. _If you have but little time for reading, spend none of it on works
of fiction._
Your success in life, your happiness, usefulness, and safety in the
world depend upon your intelligence, your good sense, your moral
character, your modes of living. What you are to be and what you are
capable of accomplishing will depend, in no small degree, upon what you
know. You require solid information. You need to learn ten thousand
things which are to be found in books. Your usefulness in the circles to
which you belong and your position in the community are intimately
connected with the degree in which you improve your mind. You have much
to do. You have no time to waste on counterfeit coin while golden
treasures of knowledge woo you on every side. Read your Bibles. Read
history, the records of the past, and the accounts of current events.
Read the biographies of good men and women. Read books of science. Push
your researches in every direction, delve in every mine that opens
before you. Traverse every rich field that invites your footsteps.
Discipline your mind, store your memory; train your will to all high
resolves. If your lot in life is such that little time can be given to
intellectual culture, do not waste an hour on the idle dreams of the
novelists.
2. _In any case read only the best works of fiction._
Supposing that the time which you are able to devote to books is not
narrowed down to an occasional leisure hour, and you feel disposed to
glance at the department of fiction, read only the best. Books are
companions. Choose your company wisely. Where a multitude surround you,
the pious and the profane, the virtuous and the vile, the refined and
the brutish, it is madness to associate with all that come. You know
what the effect upon your good name would be if you were seen walking
arm in arm with those whose very presence is dishonor. There are books
so vile that the mere possession of them is fatal to reputation. You
will find people whose minds are so empty, and whose talk is so
frivolous, that the time spent in their society is lost. There are many
books of the same sort. You will meet still other people with whom you
can not spend an hour without feeling that you have learned something
worth knowing, that you have received an impulse in the direction of the
true, the beautiful, and the good, and that you are wiser, purer,
stronger because of the interview. There are books of this kind also.
For the same reason, then, that you keep the best company to which you
have access, read the best books within your reach. They will influence
you as certainly as will living associates.
There are some few works of fiction which are well written and true to
nature, and which inculcate the right and condemn the wrong. If you read
fiction at all, read these. I do not name them, because I am not willing
to be held responsible for all the time which might possibly be spent
over them on the plea that they are here recommended. If you do not know
which they are, you will lose nothing by waiting till you are better
informed. As for the bad, their "name is Legion."
3. _In all cases let works of fiction form but a very small part of what
you read._
Read only the best, and read only a few even of the best. Or, if you
want a more definite rule, read ten good, substantial works to every one
of fiction, however good. The best works of imagination go but a little
way in supplying the mental aliment which you need. You can not live on
the odor of flowers, nor build up strong bone and muscle out of rainbows
and moonbeams. You will grow in intelligence, sense, virtue, practical
power for good only by means of solid food. Portraitures of "something
new, falling within the domain of fancy, with their interest centering
in love," may please for the moment, but if you get nothing better your
soul will be as poor and lank as the lean kine of Pharaoh's dream.
Confining your reading of this sort to the least objectionable of the
class, you must add another restriction, in order to be safe, and
confine the time thus spent to your leisure moments--what remains after
you have given due attention to better things.
4. _Cease wholly to read fiction the moment you find that it begins to
render substantial reading distasteful, and the common duties of life
irksome, or injure you in any way in mind or morals._
The man who has tampered with some intoxicating drug until an
artificial want, a new, imperious appetite, has been created, is on the
road to ruin, so they have already done themselves a fearful wrong who
have indulged in the intoxications of fiction, until they are restless
and unsatisfied without it, and unostentatious every-day life, such as
belongs to the vast majority of mortals, seems tame, dull, void of
interest, so that the mind can with difficulty be held to its
common-place details and duties. And the same question may be made a
test in both cases. What effort will it cost to stop? Will it require a
mighty struggle, an agony of soul, a summoning of all concentrated power
of will? Then summon the power and form the high resolve without a
moment's delay, for life and death tremble in the balance. Are virtue
and honor so far undermined that the victim is ready to take refuge in
hypocrisy and lies, denying in public and indulging in secret? Alas! it
is to be feared that the work of ruin is already done. At all events,
only one hope remains. There must be a quick and thorough reform, a
sudden sundering of the chains which bind to the "body of death." In the
matter of novels, are you uncertain whether the point of peril has been
reached in your own case? Try yourself. Lay aside light reading; take up
some solid work, and see if you can so interest yourself in it that you
keep on to the end without impatience, without a temptation to hurry
over the tiresome task. If, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, you find
it a weary march through a dry land, where you are haunted at every step
by the recollection of the savory flesh-pots which you have left behind
you, be assured that you can not escape too soon. The real question is
whether you are not too far gone to escape at all. Error in regard to
the reading of fiction is fraught with so many evils, that the rules
given, stringent as they may seem, are abundantly justified.
Let our young people be constantly on their guard against the mental
enslavement which marks the confirmed novel-reader. Common novel-reading
is a fearful evil, and against it there are arguments numerous and
weighty, which all will do well to heed.
1. _It wastes precious time._
By universal consent, works of fiction are called "light literature;"
and the name is correctly applied. To produce them belongs to light
thinkers, men and women whose purposes, principles, and convictions are
all light--the light-weights of the world of mind and morals. How
strangely the name of Martin Luther, John Wesley, or George Washington
would sound connected with the authorship of a fanciful story whose
"interest centers in love!" The names which illumine the historic page
with the purest light are those which it would amaze us to find
connected with the authorship of ordinary fiction. It is worth while to
pause and inquire why we would be surprised. Is not this the solution:
that men of real greatness, working in thorough earnest, under the
influence of profound conviction, are too busy with the events and
duties of the age in which they live to find time to spin out of nothing
a dream life for the amusement of idle minds?
It is evident that but little is gained by the instructions of teachers
so inferior as are the great mass of novel-writers. Their productions
are too easy reading to discipline the mind. They aim chiefly to amuse
the reader, not instruct, nor convince, nor raise him to the height of a
great purpose; and, in general, the best that can be said of the best of
them is, that they confer pleasure without inflicting injury. But
whatever may be the quality, you may be sure that excess in quantity is
injurious. The vast majority of novel readers are young, and for them to
squander the precious hours is suicidal. Youth, wasted, ushers in a
feeble middle life and an unhappy old age. They who sow nothing in the
Spring will lament over an Autumn which brings no fruit. Novel-reading
is simply a diversion, a pastime, and to spend more than an occasional
hour in diversion, however innocent it may be in itself, is a waste of
time, too precious to be thus thrown away.
2. _Excessive light reading injures the mind._
The novelist seeks to bear his readers along without any labor on
their part. They simply witness the action, and watch the unfolding of
the plot. The author amuses them with wit and humor; and, if he can,
melts them with pathos, or charms them with eloquent description. He is
the performer, and they are the spectators. If he is one of the best of
his class, they may improve a little in some branches of knowledge,
provided they are content to read slowly enough for the purpose. But
habitual novel-readers hurry on to see "how it all comes out," seldom
pausing to consider the force of a figure, or the beauty of an
expression. Ingenious thought, keen discrimination in depicting
character, accurate descriptions of natural scenery, nice points of
style, are lost in the rush of words. There is a headlong race of event
after event, shadows and light, storm and calm, and at last an end, a
rapid panorama, little of which is seen distinctly while it is passing,
and still less is remembered when it is past. The intellect does not
grow strong playing with straws thus, where there is no exercise of the
judgment on what is read, no effort of the memory to retain any thing.
The novel-reader that does little or nothing but lounge about with a
weak dilution of literature in hand, will soon become as soft and flabby
in mind as in muscle, wholly incapable of lofty purposes and worthy
deeds.
3. _Excessive light reading tends to unfit for real life._
A devourer of novels seldom has an appetite for any thing else. To do
our duty well, we must have our thoughts upon it, and our minds
interested in it. The heart and the hands must go together, or the hands
will soon tire, and do their work indifferently. What chance is there
for the student who indeed holds Blackstone or Wood before his dreamy
eyes, but whose thoughts are upon the unfinished romance in his desk?
How can the daughter at home find happiness in aiding to bear the burden
of domestic cares, while her mind is in a whirl over some delicious
love-story, in which she has lost her identity in that of the
fascinating Lady Something, with four desperate rivals for her hand, and
the crisis of her fate just over-leaf?
Works of fiction would be less doubtful reading if the reader, after
finishing the last page of the story, utterly forgot the whole, or
remembered it only as we remember veritable history. The loss in that
case would be chiefly loss of time. But as things are, novel-readers
spend many a precious hour in dreaming out clumsy little romances of
their own, in which they themselves are the beautiful ladies and the
gallant gentlemen who achieve impossibilities, suffer unutterable woe
for a season, and at last anchor in a boundless ocean of connubial
bliss. Nor does it require much previous mental cultivation to enable
one to indulge in these visionary joys. The school-boy and school-girl,
the apprentice, the seamstress, the girl in the kitchen, can conjure up
rosy dreams as readily as other people; and perhaps more readily, as it
requires but little reading of the sort to render them impatient of
their lot in life, and set them to imagine something that looks higher
and better.
In fact, the Cinderella of the old nursery story is the true type of
thousands of our novel-readers. They live a sort of double life-one in
their own proper persons, and in their real homes; the other as ideal
lords and ladies in dream-land. Ella, sitting among her native cinders,
is a very prosaic individual, addicted to exceedingly prosaic
employments, and fulfilling a destiny far removed from sublimated
romance. But touched by the wand of the good Fairy, Ella is
transfigured, her coarse garments are robes of magnificence, the mice
are prancing steeds, the pumpkin is a coach, and she rides in state, the
admiration of all beholders, and weds the prince triumphantly.
The modern Ella, sitting among the cinders, has indeed no good Fairy
to confer sudden splendors upon her; but her place is well supplied by
sundry periodicals, designed for just this style of readers. And so Ella
invests her six cents weekly, and reads, and dreams. According to the
flesh, she bears an honest, humble name, busies herself with a cooking
stove, or a noisy sewing-machine, and with all her matrimonial anglings,
perhaps has never a nibble. In her other capacity she is the Countess of
Moonshine, who dwells in a Castle of Spain, wears a coronet of diamonds,
and to whom ardent lords and smitten princes make love in loftiest
eloquence; and she is blest. But, as Napoleon once observed, there is
only a step between the sublime and the ridiculous. At any moment the
coach of state may relapse into its original squash, the prancing horses
again become mice, the costly array turn once more to rags; and the
Countess, sweeping in her trailing robes through the glittering crowd of
admiring lords and envious ladies, subside into her former simple self,
with the hideous onions to be peeled, or the clattering machine to be
kept in motion.
How can the two parts of this double existence harmonize? How is it
possible for those whose minds are thus bewildered, and who have formed
this inveterate habit of indulging in sentimental reverie, to engage
heartily in the performance of commonplace duties? The inevitable result
of excessive novel-reading is a distaste, if not an incapacity, for the
sober thought and patient effort which are the price of success in every
worthy path of life.
4. _Excessive novel-reading creates an overgrowth of the passions._
The novel-reader naturally, and perhaps unconsciously, becomes
identified with the personage in the story who is nearest to what he or
she would like to be. With the book in his hand, and his whole soul for
the time being wrapped up in the exciting history, the young man ceases
to be the apprentice, the clerk, the student, the farmer's boy, the
plain John or Peter of his real self. He is merged in the hero of the
story, handsome in person, brilliant in mind, endowed with every
excellence, and bearing a name of at least three syllables. He becomes
the ardent suitor of the beautiful lady, the heiress of the immense
estate. The burning words in which love is portrayed are his words. The
whole thing becomes so far a reality that it has something of the force
of a genuine experience; and he feels happy, or grows melancholy with
the varying futures of his imaginary passion.
Now, if Peter be a boy of fifteen, it is tolerably evident that he is
advancing a little too fast in his sentimental career. Like a certain
variety of pears described in the fruit books, there is danger of his
being rotten before he is ripe. He is meditating matrimony when he has
scarcely got beyond the limits of marbles and green apples. He looks
around at the little girls to see which of them is the princess in
disguise; and soon imagines that he is desperately in love with some
little damsel in the neighborhood, and seeing that in this dreadful
world disappointment is always possible, he begins to canvass the most
picturesque and pathetic modes of committing suicide, in case the
ferocious uncle should interfere, as he did in the book.
The young lady is similarly affected. She fancies herself the beautiful
heroine of the story, rich, accomplished, and, romantically, wretched.
She, too, begins to look about for the model lover who lays his hand
upon his heart, lifts his tearful face toward heaven, and says pretty
things. She feels disdain for the plain young men of her acquaintance,
and perhaps fixes her eyes upon some flashy stranger, whose unknown
antecedents give her a chance to invest him with all the impossible
perfections her romantic fancy is able to invent.
Now, this state of things has its ridiculous side, but it is not
healthy nor safe. The effects are too serious to be passed by with a
smile. The inveterate habit of day-dreaming thus created absorbs the
thoughts, destroys the mental balance, impairs sound judgment, and
produces tendencies which are very far from the views and feelings, aims
and principles, on which usefulness and honor in the world depend. There
is an overgrowth of the passions, an exaltation of marriage out of all
due proportion to other sources of rational happiness, an overestimate
of beauty, wealth, and the other accidentals of human life; and a
corresponding underestimate of the value of piety, industry, and the
sober virtues which are "in the sight of God of great price." It is a
vice of novelists as a class, to exalt love and matrimony above all
else, and thus create in susceptible youth the habit of thinking and
dreaming of matrimony above all else. Thus the novelist literally "turns
the heads" of young people, inasmuch as he places foremost and uppermost
the faculty which the phrenologists locate low down in the back of the
brain.
5. _The habit of novel-reading creates a morbid love of excitement
somewhat akin to the imperious thirst of the inebriate._
The victim of drugs does not love opium or alcohol because of its taste
or smell. The effect which he covets is, in truth, a mental effect. He
resorts to the drug that he may feel rich, powerful, exalted, and happy,
while, in reality, he is "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked." The victim of novels aims at the same thing in another way,
by applying the bane directly to the mind itself.
But the inebriate soon finds that in order to produce the desired
effect he must, from time to time, increase the strength of the dose. He
adds to the quantity. Then from wine he goes on to brandy, and from that
to absinthe, drugging his deadened brain to the verge of death, to gain,
from time to time, a feeble return of the momentary joys which once a
very little of his chosen stimulus had power to impart. The experience
of the confirmed novel-reader is similar. The simple tales of innocent
love which interest the beginner soon become commonplace. They fail to
excite the fancy or stir the emotions, and then something stronger must
be had. Quiet love and ordinary incident must give place to fierce
rivalry and jealousy, hate, revenge, and murder.
The editors of certain periodicals belonging to this style of
literature seem to have decided that the public mind in general has
reached this final stage. I confess that my knowledge of these
periodicals is not extensive, being confined to what is gained by a
passing glance at windows and hand-bills, where their pictorial baits
are thrust out to entrap buyers. The pictures which greet the eyes of
passengers are almost invariably pictures of somebody shooting or
stabbing somebody. The last embellishment which I have noticed, however,
is a cut of somebody strangling the other somebody with his naked hands.
This is doubtless still more delightfully horrible to the admirers of
this style of writing, and calculated to thrill them with a new
sensation. When the mind has become so vitiated that it turns away not
only from all solid reading, but even from the less objectionable works
of fiction, to revel in nauseous descriptions of lawless passions and
bloody deeds, and is so besotted with them that every thing else is void
of interest, and every duty irksome, how far is it removed from some of
the worst evils of drunkenness or even of insanity itself? How much
worse is the victim of alcohol or opium than the victim of mental
intoxication?
6. _The habitual reading of novels tends to lessen the reader's horror
of crime and wickedness._
Crime is seldom actually committed until the mind has become familiar
with the thoughts of it. The books which picture passion and crime keep
the readers in closest contact with evil till the horror with which they
first shrank from it is gone. Moreover, these books are sometimes
written to serve a special purpose. An author may be given to some sin
which places him under the ban of respectable society. He grows restive
and malicious under the frowns of the good. He writes a book in which
his own vice is white-washed into a sort of semi-respectability, and
made merely an amiable weakness, while some Church member of sounding
professions, or perhaps a Christian minister, turns out to be the
villain of the plot. Thus in one character we see a villain bearing the
Christian name, and in another a hidden vice united with so many shining
qualities that the moral deformity is hidden by the splendors that are
thrown around it. Thus the reader is trained to look suspiciously upon
the virtuous and smile upon the vicious. If he is tempted in the
direction of any particular wickedness, his memory will easily supply
him with some model from the books, who was given to the same thing, and
was a noble character, nevertheless, the admiration of all about him,
generous, brave, and in the end successful and happy. The inference of
the tempted one is naturally this: that he too can yield and be admired,
and in the end be happy.
Aside from the fictitious respectability which vice gains by being
portrayed as not incompatible with the possession of high and generous
qualities, needless familiarity with the idea of crime lessens the
horror with which we regard it. The more suicides in any community the
more easy it is to commit suicide, when rage and disappointment supply
the temptation. In communities where every man goes armed, and every eye
is familiar with scenes of blood, small provocations lead to murder. It
is not irrational to assume that one reason why play-actors, as a class,
tend to low morals is because it is a part of their regular business to
personate immoral characters on the stage; and when the mind has become
thoroughly imbued with the idea, and the lips familiar with the language
of wickedness, the step from shams to reality is short and easy.
Thus the press becomes an apostle of unrighteousness when it lends its
power to make the public mind familiar with all the phases of depravity.
He that delights to dwell upon the nauseous details is not morally safe,
and the vice which furnishes his choice reading is the very one into
which he is liable to fall. The refined and the pure shrink with
loathing from needless contact with the things which they condemn and
abhor. I believe that the fearful multiplication of tragic crimes in our
own day is due, in no small degree, to two causes--one the too general
circulation of a corrupt literature, which familiarizes the reader with
all that is detestable and infamous in character and conduct, the other
the common use of drugged liquors, which fire the brain with a wilder
frenzy than even that which is produced by alcohol, and drive men to
their doom with a still more powerful, relentless force. In brief, the
increased prevalence of gross forms of wickedness is due to a general
poisoning, mental and physical, which fills the minds and the veins of
its victims with a more deadly venom than we have hitherto known.
An extract from a religious periodical, which comes to hand while I am
writing, corroborates the first part of the statement made.
"A young man--J.H.W.--committed suicide recently in Indianapolis. He
left a letter to his brother, in which he says: 'I believe that if I had
never read a novel I should now be on the high road to fortune; but,
alas! I was allowed to read the vilest kind of novels when I was eight
or nine years old. If good books had been furnished me, and no bad ones,
I should have read the good books with the same zest that I did the bad.
Persuade all persons over whom you have any influence not to read
novels.' The Ordinary of Newgate Prison, in his report to the Lord
Mayor, represents what a fruitful source of crime the Jack Sheppard and
Paul Clifford style of novels has been among the youth of England.
Inquiring into the causes which brought many lads of respectable
parentage to the city prison, he discovered that all these boys, without
one exception, had been in the habit of reading those cheap periodicals
which are now published for the alleged instruction and amusement of the
youth of both sexes."
7. _Excessive devotion to fictitious reading is totally at variance
with Scriptural piety._
This needs neither proof nor illustration. Genuine piety takes hold of
the heart, and draws the thoughts and the affections toward God, and
makes duty the source of the sweetest enjoyment. But when the novel
usurps the place of the Bible; when secret prayer is hurried over, or
wholly neglected, because of a burning desire to know what comes next in
the story; when meditation on divine things is forgotten in endless
day-dreams of love and worldly splendor; or, worse still, when real life
is thrown into the shade by the unreal, and made to appear mean and
insipid; when the action of conscience and sober reason is swept aside
by the wild delirium of mental intoxication, what result can we look for
save apostasy and final ruin?
While I contemplate these things, I confess that I am almost ready to
recant the former part of this chapter, and insert in the place of it a
rigid iron rule for the guidance of all, young and old, learned and
unlearned: TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM NOVEL-READING HENCEFORTH AND FOREVER.
Surely, there is abundant cause for the rule of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, which warns all her communicants to abstain from "reading those
books which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God."
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