On the Vice of Novel Reading

it; the student delves into the records of other students; in unfathomable depths below both are the myriads who eat, drink, sleep and seek their prey as their primitive parents once did when they disputed carcasses with the beasts of the forests.

It is this gloomy, savage force that has made the contemplative soul of spiritual inquiry writhe under the startling contradictions of history. When this force has been aroused with fear it has snarled and roared defiance; when it has been enraged by opposition or the lash of mastership it has cooled its ferocity in the blood of countless wars, pillages and sacrifices; when satiated or pleased it has grunted with pleasure or relaxed itself in orgies so gross and unspeakable that modern history, with instinctive decency, has kept the story of them veiled behind dead languages. This gloomy, savage force has always been the same whether mastered or mastering. When some daring and cunning genius of its own nature has cowed it, as the Alexanders, Cæsars and