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قراءة كتاب On the Vice of Novel Reading. Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal.
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On the Vice of Novel Reading. Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal.
as centuries ago they crowded to the Colosseum. And it is to be recorded to the credit of wild beasts that no traveler ever yet came upon a battlefield that they had strewn with the dead bodies of their own kind.
Lest it be contended that this is a psychological portrait of the mass of mankind caricatured by bitter cynicism, let us examine the aspect of its physiology. The whole brain of an average Caucasian makes up fifty ounces of the 140 pounds weight of his body. There are thus 137 pounds of fleshly necessity to three pounds of intellectual possibility—forty-six parts of heavy dough to one part of leaven. The difference in the brain weight of races, and which decides the question of intellectual superiority, is about two ounces. The difference in the brain weight of individuals of the same race, indicating mental superiority is about two ounces. Now as the brains of individuals of all races must in proportion be equally occupied with the execution of those functions which we call instinct and those acts that may be called merely automobile (since they are the results of training and constant imitation, and have utterly no relation to intellectuality or mental initiative), it may be fairly assumed that the spiritual essence of races and individuals exists in a little grayish pulp-like lump of brain weighing two ounces out of an average bodily weight of 140 pounds. In the mass of humanity, then, there is one part possible to flower into the noble perceptions of spiritual and intellectual life, to 1,120 parts of dull, uniform, automatic animalism.
What chance has this solitary microbe of spiritual and intellectual light against the swarming bacteria of animalism? That single microbe is merely a possibility. It may be mutilated, it may be dwarfed, it may fail from weakness, it may be corrupted. It is discouraging to think how few have grown into strong life through all the perils of existence.
Under these circumstances it is but natural that even the small proportion of mankind endowed with the divine possibilities conferred by two ounces of brain, should be contaminated with many of the corruptions from below. Of those who seem to be concerned with spiritual perceptions there is a vast number mere charlatans and pretenders who, like the ingenious Japanese, are content to make cunning imitations of the real things adapted to sell to the best advantage. They patter the formulas of religion, of science, of art and morals, and ostentatiously display themselves in the costume of intellectuality to flatter, cajole and mystify the gloomy ignorance of their fellows.
This is the select officialism of the secret human nature, its recognized and authorized police—the constituted authorities of Public Opinion. It is among these that we should find the possibilities of development much increased. What do we find? That the solitary microbe merely begins its struggle here. It dare not destroy its swarming enemies since upon their continued existence its own life depends. It must regulate, control and direct them if it would live and develop, or with cowardly cunning compromise the struggle at the outset and become a servant where it seems to command. This is the first terrace-step of superiority peopled by those who can understand others above them and interpret to the mass below.
The microbe that might have become glorious ounces of brain has been content to become merely a little wart of pulp which finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another, until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude of incarnate genius burning like suns with