NOVEL READING AND INSANITY
Dr. Ray, of the Butler Insane Asylum, in noticing some of the prominent causes of insanity in our day, lays stress on the light reading of the age. It fails to develop the mental health and strength needed to endure the trials of life, and by cultivating a morbid frame of mind, makes it more susceptible to certain forms of insanity. Hear him:
Generally speaking, there can be no question that excessive indulgence in novel-reading necessarily enervates the mind and diminishes the power of endurance. In other departments of literature, such as biography and history, the mental powers are more or less exercised by the ideas which they convey. Facts are stored up in the memory, hints are obtained for the further pursuit of knowledge, judgments are formed respecting character and actions, original thoughts elicited, a spirit of investigation is excited, and, more than all, life is viewed as it really has been, and must be lived. A mind thus furnished and disciplined is provided with a fund of reserved power to fall back upon when assailed by the adverse forces which, in some shape or other, all of us must expect to encounter. In novel-reading, on the contrary, the mind passively contemplates the scenes that are brought before it, and which, being chiefly addressed to the passions and emotions, naturally please without the necessity of effort or preparation. Of late years a class of books has arisen, the sole object of which is to stir the feelings, not by ingenious plots; not by to the finer chords of the heart, and skillfully unfolding the springs of action; not by arousing our sympathies for unadulterated, unsophisticated good ness, truth, and beauty, for that would assimilate them to the immortal production of Shakespeare and Scott; but by coarse exaggeration of every sentiment, by investing every scene in glowing colors, and, in short, by every possible form of unnatural excitement. In all this there is little or no addition to one’s stock of knowledge, no element of mental strength is involved, and no one is better prepared by it for encountering the stern realities of life. The sickly sentimentality which craves this kind of stimulus is as different from the sensibility of a well-ordered mind as the crimson flush of disease from the ruddy glow of high health. A mind that seeks its nutriment from books of this description is closed against the genial influences that flow from real joy and sorrow, and from all the beauty and heroism of common life. A refined selfishness is apt to prevail over every better feeling, and when the evil day comes, the higher sentiments which bind us to our fellow-men by all the ties of benevolence, and justice, and veneration, furnishes no support or consolation.
The specific doctrine that I would inculcate is, that the excessive indulgence in novel-reading, which is a characteristic of our times, is chargeable with many of the irregularities that prevail among us in a degree unknown at any former period.
Xenophen commended the Persians for the prudent education of their children, who would not suffer them to effeminate their minds with amorous stories and idle romances, being sufficiently convinced of the danger of adding weight to the bias of corrupt nature.
In reading romances, women (who are most addicted this way,) do not only learn the evil they should be ignorant of, but also the most delicate way of committing it.