No great harm is done, just as no great harm is done by bad
novels. But an opportunity is lost; the press and the platform might do
more than they do to strengthen us and inform us, and help forward our
cause.
I name the press and the platform together because they are essentially
the same thing. Journalism is a kind of talk. The press, it is fair to
say, is ourselves; and every people, it may truly be said, has the press
that it deserves. But reading is a thing that we do chiefly for
indulgence and pleasure in our idle time; and the press falls in with
our mood, and supplies us with what we want in our weaker and lazier
moments. No responsible man, with an eager and active mind, spends much
of his time on the newspapers. Those who are excited to action by what
they read in the papers are mostly content with the mild exercise of
writing to these same papers to explain that some one else ought to do
something and to do it at once. Their excitement worries themselves more
than it hurts others. When the devil, with horns and hooves, appeared to
Cuvier, the naturalist, and threatened to devour him, Cuvier, who was
asleep at the time, opened his eyes and looked at the terrible
apparition.
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