Books Are Like Men's Souls…

“There are two kinds of books,” said Thomas Carlyle, “good books and bad books…I am not so sure that you are unacquainted, …with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is becoming the most important consideration in our day. And we have to cast aside altogether the idea people have, that …reading any book [is] …rather better and nothing at all. I must entirely call that in question…There is a number, a frightfully increasing number, of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them, not useful. But…also, …a certain number of books by a supremely noble kind of people…a number in fit to occupy all your reading…In short, …I conceive that books are like men’s souls; …Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward; …in forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful multitude, are going down, down; doing ever the more and the wider and the wilder mischief.”

This is a sharply significant statement, especially for its having been uttered nearly a century since.

Sometimes it seems to have been assumed that some inherent virtue is added simply because something appears in print. But there is no more inherent quality of character in the printed page than there is in the writers or originators of what is written.

There is no more virtue of safety in associating with any kind of book than there is in associating with any kind of person.

To expose children, for example, to cheap and shoddy and sensational, and even the immoral, just because something appears in print, is not essentially different from exposing them to cheap and immoral influences in anything else.

We wouldn’t knowingly give our children free access to physical poison—but heartbreakingly often they are given free access to poisons of the mind and soul. Books, after all (and all writings and printed pieces), are simply, as Carlyle said, like minds and souls of men.

On the positive side of the subject, it is a priceless privilege to become acquainted with great thoughts and great minds and great men by what is preserved in print. “… seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” Becoming acquainted with the best in books is not only an opportunity, but also an obligation. But in our love of learning, in our love of freedom, in our pursuit of facts, we should be as discriminating about the printed page as we ought to be in all else that we choose to live with in life.