CHAPTER X. THE IMPULSES AND TASTES OF YOUTH. THE HE Theater always has been and must be chiefly attended and supported by the young. And investigation shows that in every audience as many as two thirds are under thirty years of age. This would be so if the Theater attracted all classes of the population equally, for but little more than one third are over thirty years old. But as age advances the love of amusement, as such, in many persons diminishes, and the loss of novelty, the increase of cares, the demands on money, and the decline of health, all tend to reduce the attendance on expensive and late evening entertainments of every kind. And as very young children are seldom taken, we are, probably, much below the truth in stating that as many as two thirds of the persons composing every ordinary assembly in the Theater are between the ages of fifteen and thirty. In determining, therefore, whether the Theater, as an institution, should receive the support of Christians, we must keep the fact that it chiefly influences youth and young men and women clearly before our minds. Now there are principles concerning the impulses and tastes of youth, as well as the peculiar dangers to which they are exposed, that are as certain as any thing which experience and observation teach, and these must be applied in estimating the probable influence of the Theater. Among these principles the following are most important, and bear directly on the solution of the problem. Liberty and license are peculiarly charming to the young, and especially to young men; while the idea of restraint is entirely distasteful to them, and those who impose it are disliked in proportion to the extent of their power and persistency. Quiet living and self-denial are attained by painful discipline. Many and bitter are the lessons which the high-spirited youth must learn before he can be brought to adopt, as the rule of his life, a willing and rational denial to himself of present gratification for future good. And often the very qualities which would make the young man, if he practice self denial, pre-eminently powerful and useful, will ruin him most speedily and hopelessly if he does not deny himself. Equally true is it that a horror of vice, arising from a conviction and vivid apprehension of its sinfulness and of its dreadful consequences, is the best safeguard for youth. Familiarity with vice in any form, before the mind and conscience are thoroughly fortified against temptation, and habits of right living are established, is dangerous in the extreme. It is also known and admitted by all thoughtful observers, that the gratification of irregular impulses in youth forms a habit sooner than similar gratifications in adult years. The nature is more plastic and there is less power of self-control. Besides, the blood then courses more wildly through the veins, and excitement yields more pleasure. Lord Byron had this in view when he wrote: "Ah, vice, how soft are thy voluptuous ways! A cherub hydra round us thou dost gape, And mold to every taste thy dear delusive shape." And what is as pertinent, and in its consequences as baneful, is, that when such a habit is formed in youth it is much more difficult to shake it off than when it was not begun till middle life. The system has, in the former case, "grown to the act," and a positive change has taken place in the structure; while in the latter all the preceding tendencies are against the permanent domination of a new course of action. Hence we know that it is comparatively rare that bad habits, whose foundation was not laid in the excesses of youth, are formed after middle life, excepting in the cases where morals, in extreme age, deteriorate with the accession of dotage, an occurrence more frequent than those who never gave the subject any attention may suppose. And we also know that when the evil habits set up in youth are persisted in through early manhood, the probabilities of their ever being shaken off greatly and rapidly diminish with every succeeding year; and that to break them up at any stage after they have been fairly entered upon, is like "wrenching a bone from its socket." Another fact of great significance is, that morbid habits are much more persistent than those which fall in with the healthful operations of nature or the legitimate obligations of life. It is more difficult to give up the use of opium, alcohol, or even tobacco, than to deny one's self any one kind of wholesome food; and it is much harder to prevent the rising of lascivious thoughts, when allowed long or frequently to absorb the attention, than to destroy any habit of reflection or occupation which does not awaken or stimulate the passions. Such abnormal habits become "second nature," and often enchain the victim in a thraldom more abject and pitiless. than the first nature, even where that is intensified by a strong hereditary predisposition, would ordinarily maintain over any responsible being. |