CHAPTER VI.

THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS AND READING ON THE OPINIONS AND PRINCIPLES.

We have learned that the best books, certainly those which are the most interesting, are the books which most distinctly express some individuality in their authors. We have also learned that that reading is ordinarily the most useful and invigorating which brings us most closely and consciously into contact with writers of marked and earnest personality.

We cannot resist the inference that books and reading must exert a powerful influence upon the opinions and principles. This they do both directly and indirectly— directly, when they address well or ill-reasoned arguments to the understanding; indirectly, when their influence upon the principles is secondary and unnoticed. Hence the rule-and it is a rule of the first importance-that in reading we should make ourselves distinctly aware of the principles of a writer, so far as he consciously or unconsciously expresses them in his writings, so that if need be we may be on our guard against them. This rule is not so necessary in the case of books which are avowedly written for the purpose of defending a system of opinion, or establishing a political, scientific, or theological creed. In such cases the doctrines may be true or they may be false, the opinions may be salutary or pernicious; but the positions are distinctly avowed, and the reasons for them are urged directly and confessedly for the purposes of conviction. There may be serious exposure in such cases, but the ex

posure is one of which we are distinctly aware, and in which to be forewarned is to be forearmed. In respect to these cases, we do not propose to write a homily on that most important and much abused direction," Prove all things; hold fast that which is good," however useful and greatly needed such a homily might be. We shall not stay to defend the utmost courage and freedom in the formation of our opinions, by the use of light and evidence, from whatever sources these may come. Nor shall we enlarge upon the important consideration that many, not to say most, inquirers after truth may often learn more from the antagonists than they can from the defenders of the opinions which they accept; nor shall we contend that every student and reader should honestly estimate and interpret the force of the arguments on both sides of every question, as they are in fact regarded and held by the defenders of each.

Considerations like these scarcely need to be urged upon thoughtful and earnest readers, in these days of free discussion and large toleration; or, as we might say, these days when, among large classes of bookish and reading men, free discussion is but another name for universal doubt, or a free and easy vacillation of opinion; when free toleration is made both pretext and excuse for intellectual libertinism; when earnest and fixed convictions on many subjects are practically judged to be an affair of association or taste;—when jesting and sneering littérateurs so rarely think of asking What is truth? or, if they ask, do not "wait for an answer.'

Nor, on the other hand, do we care to insist on the dangers which lie in the opposite direction, from a premature agitation of opinions, before the mind is capable of a thorough and dispassionate examination of the reasons for or against them, although no abuse of the rule "to read both sides" is more serious in its consequences than that which

is committed by persons as yet untrained to discriminating analysis or comprehensive speculation, when they attempt to judge of arguments which they can neither comprehend nor compare, or when they rush headlong into the study of controversies concerning opinions which they have good practical grounds for receiving. Admonitions of this sort, however needful or pertinent they might be for the selection of books and the direction of reading, would open too wide and indefinite a field of discourse.

We limit ourselves to the unconscious or the designed propagation of the principles of an individual writer, in an incidental way, by means of writings that have no direct relation to the truth or falsehood of these principles, and which, as works of literature rather than of argument, profess to stand apart from the field of discussion and of doctrine. In writings of this kind no direct attack is made upon those truths which are held sacred by rightminded men. The convictions which men are usually taught to accept concerning self-restraint and self-denialconcerning the decent morals and the courteous manners, which are at once the bonds and ornaments of human life -are courteously recognized with outward homage. Conscience and duty, virtue and God, are named with respect, and the reader, it may be, is formally assured that no man holds them, when properly understood, in higher esteem than does the writer. And yet, in the tale or the history, the poem or the essay, such language is used, such insinuations are hinted, such associations are skillfully evoked, as to depress and chill the better aspirations and the nobler enthusiasms, and to leave the reader with a weakened faith in the nobleness of man and the goodness of God.

Notable examples of influences of this kind are furnished in the celebrated histories of Gibbon and of Hume. Gibbon has left behind him one of the most splendid monuments of human genius that modern literature can furnish.

Inspired by the sublime and awful recollections that haunt the ruins of the Eternal City, he essayed to write the story of the "Decline and Fall" of that wonderful empire, of whose greatness that city in its ruins is at once the symbol and the sepulchre. This he accomplished with an industry that was equal to the herculean labor involved in the collection of his materials, and with a genius that overmastered and moulded his learning at its will. There are faults in Gibbon's style, and there may be defects in his narrative; but no man can deny the genius that could attempt so great a task, and could execute it so well; and still less the value and splendor of the work which it has left as its memorial. But it happened that the decline and fall of Rome was coincident with the rise and growth of another Empire, mysterious in its beginnings and superhuman in its force-a kingdom which has survived the wrecks of many great empires, and which can be no better described than in the words of the prophet, as "the stone" which "became a great mountain and filled the whole earth,” as the kingdom which "should break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms," and shall "stand for ever." Had Gibbon's genius been enlightened by Faith, so that he had been fired and elevated at the thought of the wondrous movements of this unseen empire-had he but conceived somewhat of the plan of God's providence in first subduing the world to the sway of one iron dominion, that he might provide and prepare a suitable arena upon which to introduce to the human race the most wonderful being that was ever born of that race; so that when this race was, as it were, taught to know one language, and gathered into one grand amphitheatre, it might hear God speak to man-he would have contemplated the growth and culmination of Rome under relations that were far higher and more elevating than any which he recognized. Had he also seen how, to further the purposes connected with the

progress of the new kingdom, it must first be incorporated with the old Roman dominion, and even gain possession of the throne of the Caesars, so that when the empire should be broken in pieces, each shivered portion might become the nucleus of a new Christian state-had he written of Rome as thus falling, that a greater than Rome might rise, what a different book had Gibbon's history been in its plan and its principles, in its influence and its fame! Had Gibbon but seen, as it would require no great stretch of honesty or candor for a philosopher to see, that everything good which comes to man and dwells among men must be alloyed by human imperfection, and that, therefore, it was not wonderful that Christian priests and Christian teachers, in a barbarous age, should show much of human passion and human infirmity-and had he, instead of exaggerating and coloring these inconsistencies, set forth the virtues that shone the brighter because encompassed by such darkness, how much nobler and truer an impression had he made! Had he demonstrated to himself and to others, that the natural causes in the passions and prejudices of men, to which he ascribes the preservation and triumph of a system which was in deadly hostility with these agencies, did, in their presence and power, only serve to illustrate the over-mastering force of that vital principle which could work them out, throw them off, or live on in spite of them, he would have done but justice to the truth as well as to the grandeur of his

theme.

But Gibbon did no such thing, but rather made the History of Rome, with all its splendor as a theme for a Christian historian, to be an occasion for the insinuation of debasing unbelief, and the manifestation of the workings of an impure imagination. Of the tens of thousands who have read this work as a history, and for historic purposes, few have been able wholly to escape the indirect