A SUBTLE SEDUCTION by C. M. S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 22, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 21.

A SUBTLE SEDUCTION.

By C. M. S.

THE NEW YORK Independent notes the striking fact that notwithstanding the presidential campaign of last year, the fighting in the Philippines and South Africa, the weighty affairs in connection with the China disturbance, the developments going on in Cuba and Porto Rico—notwithstanding all these important occurrences, the production and consumption of light literature has increased.

These important matters have not been able to absorb the attention of the people as once they did; but the fictions of the novelist have thrived in every society; have occupied the attention of men, women, and children; have robbed the household of the attention it should have had from mother and father; have robbed the children of the precious moments which should have been devoted to their instruction and their moral and physical culture; and by their own indulgence, have robbed them of the foundation of a broad, manly, and womanly character.

This suffering has not been confined to the home, but wherever an active brain is required, fiction has introduced its deadly work. The mechanic has lost, thru novel-reading, the power to concentrate his mind upon mechanical problems, or to turn off high-grade work in an efficient and agreeable manner. It is impossible to imagine a Franklin, a Morse, a Fulton, a Whitney, an Edison, or a Tesla, pouring for hours (or whole days as some do) over the imaginary experiences of persons who never existed. As a simple matter of business they would tell you they had no time to squander in this the most foolish kind of idleness. Why the most foolish? They would tell you that in addition to the squandering of time, it utterly unfitted their brain for sober, serious calculations.

It is not an occasional wound that endangers the strength and effectiveness of an army; but it is the long, lingering, debilitating disease that is most feared. The wounded man may return to duty strong and rugged; but the lingering disease weakens the constitution, and the power and effectiveness is gone. It is this latter work that is going on upon the brain of the novel-reader, subtly undermining its most important functions. Tickling the imagination on one hand, the novel robs men on the other, of that which is more precious than the “golden wedge of Ophir” or the diamonds of Kimberly. Gold and precious stones are cheap when compared with the mental and spiritual possibilities of man. To the fiction-clouded brain the truths of the Gospel fade into dreamy nothingness, while the myths of fiction are idealized and materialized; and the liquor-steeped, tobacco-steeped novelist becomes the dictator of the people’s course in life.

What has brought this about so soon and so subtly? The answer is not far to seek, nor hard to find. It is in the present novel-infested curriculum of the public school. The Independent says, and says truly: “Such revolution in the public mind might have been confidently expected largely on account of the rapid growth of literary appetite aroused by the enthusiastic training in our public schools. The millions of children educated to love books are beginning to appear as men and women who love books and buy them.” It is only within recent years that the public schools have required a certain amount of novel-reading on the part of the children, but how rapidly and how terribly is the fruit of its folly manifest. Even such influential religious journals as the one above quoted look with complacency or open commendation upon this work and its baleful results.

The mind of man never had a more subtle seducer than is found in the trashy fiction of the present day; and childhood’s possibility for true manhood and womanhood never had a more dangerous obstacle thrown in its path than the novel-reading which the public schools are now requiring as a part of the regular school work. Upon the mind saturated, in its most receptive stage, with the literature of fiction, the words of eternal truth fall with ever-lessening effect. The moulding influence which such a work must have upon the present and the rising generation is making of them fit soil for the rankest weeds of error which these “last days” can produce. Surely demons must laugh to see men doing their work for them, and doing it so well. In this way do men help on the cause of man’s greatest enemy, and build the death-trap for themselves and their children. It is a sad, merciless business this debauching of little children in the name of literary education. “As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” As the child’s mind is moulded, so will it grow. Fed thus early on the chaff of the day, it will learn to look for chaff all along its journey, and to feed chaff to those who come after.

Such is the outlook in the line of child training, and such the preparation of the soil upon which is now growing the last great harvest of the world.

C. M. S.