Anonymous
The immorality of reading nove(...) 01/23/26(Fri)11:34:33 No.25039934

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The immorality of reading novels Anonymous 01/23/26(Fri)11:34:33 No.25039934

>If it is true, that the present age is more corrupt than the preceding, the great multiplication of Novels probably contributes to its degeneracy.
The great 18th-century English essayist Vicesimus Knox recognized the harms that may come from reading novels and delving too much into sentiment. He saw it, rightly, as being akin to masturbation; he noted, too, that it made one less inclined to take on the illustrious Latin Classics.
He recognizes that novels are typically read by the young, even though most novels were not written with the youth in mind, and so they take in ideas beyond their mental capacities, and thus distort them to their understanding. He chastises the novel for given moral degradation a nice coat of linguistic paint:
>It has given an amiable name to vice, and has obliquely excused the extravagance of the passions, by representing them as the effect of lovely sensibility. The least refined affections of humanity have lost their indelicate nature, in the ideas of many, when dignified by the epithet of sentimental; and transgressions forbidden by the laws of God and man, have been absurdly palliated, as proceeding from an excess of those finer feelings, which vanity has arrogated to itself as elegant distinctions. A softened appellation has given a degree of gracefulness to moral deformity.
Knox concludes by saying that if the novel were to be banned, the young man would seek mental nourishment by reading true histories during his leaders hours. And what a fine thing that would be.