Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/93

 as they are artificially collocated in books. The habit of the eye, and of the voice, is therefore hurrying him on much faster than the mind can follow; and he either abandons altogether the attempt mentally to accompany his own voice, or he suffers harm. And it is manifest that, while children of little or no intelligence will, by adopting the former expedient, escape uninjured; those whose curiosity is keen will not be content with any such vapid practice, and are therefore liable to so much the more damage.

And in another way it is intelligent children who suffer the most from much reading; for, while they shun the nursery nonsense, the cock-robin inanities, that amuse their inferiors, and are always seeking for books a step or two above their comprehension, the stress of the mind is increased. Books of the highest class, totally unintelligible to them, would be less injurious than are such as they usually crave and devour. But when the same book is read to an intelligent child, at a moderate rate, the mind, far more familiar with words by the ear than by the eye, catches the meaning of sentences rapidly enough to prevent the jar between the exterior and interior faculties.

Nevertheless, this ill consequence of much reading, during the period of infancy, is of a kind to wear away by mere habit, and by a constantly extending familiarity with the meaning of words. But it is not so with another injurious effect of reading, which affects the animal system in all its functions; and though little thought of, is, as I have no doubt, a frequent cause of general infirmity of health, and serious diseases of the sensorium.

Adults utterly forget the physical sensations of early life, even if they were distinctly regarded at the time; nor are there any means of ascertaining some very important facts, which the habits of adolescence obliterate, except a very careful observation of children, guided by specific information. Few persons conversant with children, can