It pays to spend thought on the pictures we put on our walls. A
charming woman once said:
“My earliest impression is a picture that hung on the wall over
my bed and which I had to look at the last thing every night
before I went to sleep. It was that of a white horse upon the
back of which was crouched the body of a fierce tiger, with his
teeth and claws embedded in the flesh of the horse. The blood
ran down from the wounds and the whole thing was frightful to
me. I went to sleep every night afraid and very uncomfortable.
This picture is as vivid to me to-day as tho I was looking at
the real thing, and will never be erased.”
If that had been the picture of “The Guardian Angel,” or “The
Evening Prayer,” or some one of the many that are pleasing and
that teach some beautiful lesson, that woman would have had a
happier remembrance, and would be better both physically and
morally.--_Religious Telescope._
(2370)
* * * * *
While we empower the police to put down with a strong hand the
exhibition in shop windows, and the censor of stage plays and
spectacles to interdict the parade in theaters of pictures and
scenes of an “immoral” character, because it is recognized that
these have a tendency to corrupt the mind of youth--and age,
too--nothing whatever is done to restrain the daily increasing
evil of pictorial placards displayed on every boarding, and of
highly-wrought scenes produced at nearly all the theaters, which
not only direct the thoughts, but actively stir the passions of
the people in such way as to familiarize the average mind with
murder in all its forms, and to break down that protective sense
of “horror” which nature has given us, with the express purpose,
doubtless, of opposing an obstacle to the evil influence of
the exemplification of homicide. It does seem strange--passing
strange--that this murder culture by the educationary use of
the pictorial art has not been checked by public authority. We
have no wish to make wild affirmations, but knowing what we
do, as observers of development, we can have no hesitation in
saying that the increasing frequency of horribly brutal outrages
is by no means unaccountable. The viciously inclined are, in a
sense, always weak-minded--that is to say, they are especially
susceptible to influences moving them in the direction their
passions incline them to take; and when the mind (or brain)
is imprest through the senses, and particularly the sense of
sight, in such manner as to produce mental pictures, either in
waking thoughts or dreams of homicide, the impulsive organism
is, as it were, prepared for the performance of the deeds which
form the subjects of the consciousness. We are, of course,
writing technically; but the facts are indisputable, and we
trust they will be sufficiently plain. It is high time that this
ingenious and persistent murder-culture should cease.--London
_Lancet_.
(2371)