Books Are Like Men's Souls…

“There are two kinds of books,” said Thomas Carlyle, “good books and bad books… I am not to assume that you are unacquainted, … with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is becoming a very important consideration in our day. And we have to cast aside altogether the idea people have, that… reading any book [is]… better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that in question… There is a frightfully increasing number of books that are decidedly, to the readers of them, not useful. But …also,… a certain number of books were written by a supremely noble kind of people…[books] 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 are going down, down; doing ever the more and wider and wilder mischief.”¹ This is a sharply significant statement, especially for its having been said more than a century ago. Sometimes it seems to have been assumed that some truth or virtue is added simply because something appears in print. But there is o more quality or character in the printed page than there is in the writers of what is written. There is no more safety in associating with any kind of book than there is in associating with any kind of person. To expose children, for example, to the shoddy and sensational, and 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 that which poisons the mind and soul. Books, after all (and all writings and printed pieces), are simply, as Carlyle said, like the 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. Becoming acquainted with the best in books is not only an opportunity, but also an obligation. But in our love of learning, we should be as discriminating about what we partake of on the printed page as we ought to be in all else that we choose to live with in life.