o. 
 
 -LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION 
 IN LITERATURE
 
 BY DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON 
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY, a vols. 8vo. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: An Introduction 
 to the Practical Sciences. 8vo. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS OF THE 
 HUMAN MIND. 8vo. 
 
 SOCIAL PROGRESS: An Essay. 8vo. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 LONDON AND NEW YORK
 
 THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION 
 IN LITERATURE 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 BY 
 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY ; " " THE PROBLEM OF EVIL ; 
 " THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS OF THE HUMAN MIND ; " 
 " SOCIAL PROGRESS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 1800
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY 
 DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & C<x 
 Aitor Place, New York
 
 TO 
 CERTAIN GOOD FRIENDS OF MINE, 
 
 OF BOTH SEXES, 
 WHO ARE WRITERS 
 
 OF FICTION, 
 1 RESPECTFULLY DEDICATE 
 
 THIS BIT OF PREACHING,- 
 
 IN A DEPARTMENT IN WHICH THEY HAVE 
 SUCCESSFULLY PRACTISED. 
 
 NKW YORK, Sept. i, 1890.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE OFFICE OF FICTION IN LITERATURE i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 INTEREST u 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF FICTION 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE MORAL VALUE OF FICTION 23 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE ESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION 29 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM 46 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE EXHIBITION OF POWER 84 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING . . . 101
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE EXHIBITION OF LOVE 115 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE EXHIBITION OF SOCIAL LIFE. '. 131 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE COMIC OR LUDICROUS 138 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE GENERAL SUBJECT REVIEWED 146 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE 153 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION 205 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 THE CRITICISM OF A WORK OF FICTION 217
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION 
 IN LITERATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OFFICE OF FICTION IN LITERATURE. 
 
 WHEN I have finished " Romola," by George 
 Eliot, the first and most obvious thing to be noted 
 upon reflection is that the book has interested 
 me sufficiently to cause me to read it through. 
 If, then, encouraged by this experience, and be- 
 lieving a novel to be a novel, I take up " Sir 
 Charles Grandison," I may find, after reading a 
 portion, that I grow tired, lay the book down, and 
 refuse to recur to it. I am bored, and the thought 
 of continuing is irksome. Clearly, then, all tales 
 are not interesting. Again, I am led to the pe- 
 rusal of M. Zola's " La Terre." My attention is 
 held ; I am presently shocked, then disgusted. I 
 throw the pamphlet into the fire and open the 
 windows to air the room. But my friend Jones 
 tells me he is very fond of " Sir Charles Grandi- 
 
 I
 
 2 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 son." He thinks novel writing has improved very 
 little since the days of Richardson, and he does 
 not like George Eliot. My friend Smith read " La 
 Terre " through, and while, being a church-mem- 
 ber, he could not say he approved of the work, he 
 was interested, and thought there was something 
 virile about it, as there is in the dramas of Shake- 
 speare. At least he was sure the book would sell. 
 It is thus evident that whether a book is to us 
 readable or not depends on our respective men- 
 tal constitutions, as does also the question of 
 approval or disapproval. What is literary meat 
 to one man is poison to another. If one person 
 likes devil-fish, to him devil-fish is good, although 
 there may not be many who have such an ap- 
 petite. To the Indiana drummer who excited 
 " Rev." Joseph Cook's wrath by eating raw steak, 
 bloody beef was a great delicacy. He relished 
 and assimilated it. Similarly, when we say a 
 book is good or bad, our judgment is formed by 
 our own likings, and our ideas of what is good for 
 other people as based upon our tastes. But the 
 diversity in human nature is so great that such a 
 judgment, founded upon individual notions and 
 preferences, is a hazardous one to make. We dis- 
 cover that a very intricate problem is presented 
 when we are called upon to value a literary work, 
 for we have, in the first place, to take into account 
 the immense variety of human wants ; and, if an 
 ethical element is introduced into our considera-
 
 FICTION IN LITERATURE. 3 
 
 tions, the whole field of moral science, with its 
 countless questions of casuistry, is opened. 
 
 Literature involves the preservation and com- 
 munication of thought, using the latter term not 
 in the sense of reasoned discourse, but in a 
 broader application indicative of the whole of 
 intellectual life with its emotional and volitional 
 dependencies implied. Literature, therefore, may 
 be a record of any part of human experience, so 
 far as it is possible for words to express it ; and 
 this record, being also a means of communication, 
 may induce a repetition of the experience or may 
 furnish a stimulus to other experiences suggested 
 by it. Hence literature affects conduct and is 
 potent in both individual and social development. 
 
 Literature may be a record of what a person 
 has perceived without, of what he has felt within, 
 of what he has inferred and imagined, and of 
 what he has done. The second and the last of 
 these furnish autobiography. The third is in- 
 direct autobiography, indeed ; but its character- 
 istic is the expression of the mental life of the 
 individual in constructed forms, which, though 
 they are the product of experience, are not them- 
 selves given in any primary feeling or perception. 
 His inferences are generalized from his primary 
 experiences ; his fictions of imagination are ideal 
 creations. There remains the first class, which is 
 purely historical, a chronicle of what is and has 
 been in the world about us, embracing both
 
 4 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 natural and social history and covering all of the 
 universe with which the individual mind has any 
 communication. 
 
 Fiction, as the name imports, belongs to the 
 third of the classes thus roughly marked out. 
 It is a construction of human life and society 
 which is not an exact reproduction of actual 
 individuals, or of social life, nor of incidents of 
 any particular series of events. The variation 
 from historical accuracy may be slight, or may 
 extend very far ; but the narrative must furnish 
 a sufficient departure to exclude it from the cate- 
 gory of historical accounts. To be sure, many so- 
 called histories are really novels, and many histori- 
 cal novels are more valuable as history than the 
 professedly accurate chronicles ; but the distinc- 
 tion is as stated: and in these latter cases the 
 writer merely throws upon the reader who wishes 
 to take the trouble the burden of disentangling 
 the true and the fictitious, while those who do 
 not care are content that the account may be 
 either. 
 
 The form of fiction may be prose or verse, but 
 usage has confined the term to such prose or 
 verse as contains a movement of personality, a 
 narrative of events to the story, the tale, the 
 novel. Hence, essays are not fiction, though 
 Plato's " Dialogues " might not inappropriately 
 be considered so, as they fulfil some of the most 
 important conditions named. But in these pro-
 
 FICTION IN LITERA TURE. 5 
 
 ductions the narrative is subordinate to the 
 reasoning, and the reader's attention is never fixed 
 upon the incident, unless it be in that uccount 
 of the death of Socrates near the end of the 
 " Phaedo," and perhaps in one or two other places 
 to a less degree. So that the " Dialogues " can 
 scarcely even be reckoned as dramatic fiction. 
 Nor can we include under the term descriptive 
 poetry, like Goldsmith's " Deserted Village " ; nor 
 reflective, like Bryant's " Thanatopsis " ; nor di- 
 dactic, like Wordsworth's " Excursion " though 
 all are works of the creative imagination. On the 
 other hand, the great epics, like the " Iliad," the 
 " Odyssey," " The Inferno," " Paradise Lost," are 
 clearly poetical fiction, and more evidently still 
 such narratives as Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales." 
 But restriction in the use of the word has gone 
 so far that when one speaks of Fiction we under- 
 stand prose fiction in the form of the story or 
 novel. I shall make such usage the excuse for tak- 
 ing this form of literature as the principal topic of 
 the present discussion, though most of what I shall 
 have occasion to say will apply equally well to 
 the tale in verse. Poetical composition, however, 
 seems to demand a separate treatment, especially 
 on the artistic side. The same thing is true of 
 dramatic literature the most intricate and diffi- 
 cult of all literary construction. It will hence be 
 better if I leave these departments of fictitious 
 literature without further treatment than may be
 
 6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION, 
 
 involved in an occasional reference or illustra- 
 tion. 
 
 As was remarked at the outset, the first thing 
 to be observed in reflecting upon the fact that we 
 have read a novel is that it is interesting enough 
 for us to have gone through it. Nevertheless, it 
 is no doubt the case that many people have read 
 novels in which they were not interested, impelled 
 thereto by a stern feeling of duty created by the 
 importunities of friends, or by the pride of a 
 professional novel-reader who must keep up his 
 reputation, or by general popular sentiment that 
 a particular story is good. But there is no gen- 
 eral moral obligation resting upon the community 
 to read any production of this kind, as there is to 
 read the Bible, or even the history of one's coun- 
 try. Common sentiment allows people to read 
 or to avoid reading novels because they like or 
 dislike them. This circumstance reveals the chief 
 value of such works. They are primarily impor- 
 tant in their artistic aspect. They are born of art, 
 and as such their first office is to interest, to amuse, 
 to please. 
 
 Yet it is quite certain that in order to please 
 regard must be had to the sources of pleasure in 
 the human mind. A story is artificial and does 
 not of itself give pleasure naturally, as does a beau- 
 tiful color, a musical sound, a cheering warmth 
 when one { chilled. There must be some regard 
 for artistic principles. An ungramm.atical narra-
 
 FICTION IN LITERATURE. j 
 
 tive, for instance, at once offends ; as also does 
 such a dialogue unless the irregular speech is made 
 to emanate from a character in whom it would be 
 natural. Similarly, vulgarities of expression given 
 as the language of the author displease and dis- 
 gust. Clumsiness, crudity, tediousness, tautology, 
 commonplace, and many other offences against 
 good taste have to be carefully avoided. There 
 are all forms of beauty, symmetry, sublimity, 
 grandeur, and their opposites, to be apprehended 
 and felt in the reading of a book, and they have 
 the most potent influence in fixing our estimate 
 of it. 
 
 But it must be recollected that the sense of 
 beauty is in no small degree dependent upon truth. 
 No tale can be regarded as a work of fine art which 
 does not have regard in its unfolding to a certain 
 amount of congruity with the order of nature. 
 By this it is not meant that entirely fanciful crea- 
 tions do not interest, for exactly the contrary is 
 the case. " Gulliver's Travels," the " Munchausen" 
 stories, and the vast number of popular fairy tales 
 bear ample witness to this fact. Even absurdity 
 is sometimes very delightful in all its degrees, from 
 the mild ridiculousness of Mr. Frarik R. Stock- 
 ton's " Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Ale- 
 shine," to the utter nonsense of the " Wogly Bird 
 and Ginko Tree." But there must be a coherence 
 and harmony in exhibiting the improbable or non- 
 existent. The plan or idea must be consistently
 
 8 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 maintained and developed. By preserving such 
 a unity, the demands of the sense of truth are 
 satisfied. The necessity for doing this with skill 
 increases as mankind becomes more scientific. 
 The ignorant mind is satisfied with the most ex- 
 traordinary bouleversements, catastrophes, and pro- 
 ductive effects wrought by gods and demons, and 
 even by the deus ex machina ; because such things 
 seem perfectly natural and probable when the 
 belief in the existence of spiritual agencies, mov- 
 ing arbitrarily, is present. But the scientifically 
 trained mind will have none of such trifling. A 
 material or human cause must be adduced to 
 account for everything, or the reader sneers and 
 condemns. When the novel-writer gets out of the 
 region of the purely fanciful and deals with the 
 experiences of human beings in the world as it 
 is, there is an absolute necessity that he conform 
 to the natural conditions of his locus in quo and 
 its inhabitants. Mr. Rider Haggard, in his tales 
 of South African adventure, would have been 
 laughed down if he had merely reproduced the 
 incidents, the appearance of country, and the game 
 that would be found in a hunting expedition in 
 the north of England ; as uproariously as would 
 an author describing a fox-hunt in the latter re- 
 gion who should allow his hunters suddenly to 
 start an elephant. Walter Scott never would have 
 succeeded with the " Waverley Novels " had he not 
 made his descriptions consistent with their times ;
 
 FICTION IN LITERATURE. g 
 
 nor would the great artists who have portrayed 
 character, like Shakespeare, Moliere, and Balzac, 
 have commanded the attention of the world, if 
 they had not presented to us men and women who 
 were typical of their times and circumstances, and 
 for whose existence in the story there was scien- 
 tific warrant. 
 
 Again, the moral quality of a story, its scenes 
 and characters, is not and cannot be ignored. Peo- 
 ple who are animated by strong moral purposes 
 will be governed in their judgment of a novel by 
 its supposed ethical influences. To those who 
 believe that the breaking up of old theological 
 notions is a gain for morality, " Robert Elsmere " 
 is most admirable ; while to those who esteem it 
 immoral to loosen the hold of ancient dogmas 
 and creeds, the story is thoroughly bad arid most 
 reprehensible. No doubt the artistic merit or de- 
 merit of the book in question is, in the minds of 
 great numbers who read it, fixed and settled by its 
 moral character according to their views. We 
 may say all this is most unjust ; but the fact re- 
 mains, that mankind is so constituted that such 
 injustice is inevitable. 
 
 Without going further into detail, it is evident 
 that the office of fiction in literature is a very 
 complex one. It contributes to satisfy our crav- 
 ings for beauty, for truth, and for goodness ; but 
 how to balance these properly is the serious prob- 
 lem. We must come back to our original propo-
 
 10 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 sition ; namely, that the prime requisite of a novel 
 is that it shall interest. Our inquiry, then, must 
 be : What are the things that interest ? What 
 does interest mean ? And what are its bearings 
 upon human life and happiness ?
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 INTEREST. 
 
 WHATEVER attracts and detains the attention 
 interests, for this attraction and detention is what 
 interest means. Any impact of sufficient force 
 will secure attention for the moment. It may be 
 arrested and held by a sensation which is pleasur- 
 able or painful ; but if there be pain, an effort is 
 made to get away from the object producing pain, 
 and to expel the painful consciousness. This effort 
 may not be successful, but it will be continued or 
 repeated until the cause of pain is removed or un- 
 consciousness supervenes. If the sensation be 
 pleasurable, the attention is detained until the 
 pleasurable quality fades out, or some new object 
 is presented of greater sensational power. So far, 
 then, as sensational experiences are concerned, the 
 attention varies directly as the quantity of sensa- 
 tion. 
 
 But in the representative mental life the voli- 
 tional law of the avoidance of pain, just alluded 
 to, has a wider scope for its operation, because 
 the higher the degree of mental development, the 
 greater is the volitional control of the mind over
 
 12 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 its own states. Hence, that which is painful is 
 more speedily dismissed, the mind refusing to 
 dwell upon disagreeable or pain-producing sugges- 
 tions. I cannot escape a harsh, disagreeable noise 
 except by getting away from it, and until I do 
 this I am forced to give it attention. But if I 
 only remember that noise, the unpleasant associa- 
 tions of themselves tend to drive the recollection 
 away and replace it by something else. Anything 
 that suggests the disagreeable in our past experi- 
 ence we aim to put out of mind. 
 
 When we read a book, if the feelings aroused 
 are unpleasant, it is quite within our power to 
 throw it down and have no more of it. Unless 
 we are bound hand and foot and forced to listen 
 to the reading of some one else, we can control the 
 situation. The question of interest then resolves 
 itself into the broader one of what produces pleas- 
 urable and what produces painful emotion. 
 
 If, however, the statement be left thus, a dis- 
 tinction of immense importance will be overlooked. 
 This distinction arises from the fact that what 
 hurts my fellow-being does not necessarily pain 
 me. On the contrary, it is true that I may de- 
 rive much pleasure from my neighbor's woe. It 
 does not deprive me of pleasurable interest in a 
 work of fiction, therefore, to find that it depicts 
 experiences painful to somebody, so long as they 
 are not painful to me. My sympathetic likes and 
 dislikes must be considered. In reading " Maiwa's
 
 INTEREST. 13 
 
 Revenge," by Mr. Rider Haggard, for instance, it 
 gives the reader great satisfaction to have the old 
 barbarian chief caught and horribly tortured in 
 the " Thing-that-bites." If, on the other hand, 
 the victim had been the captive Englishman who 
 had been designed for such a fate, the feelings 
 aroused would have been decidedly unpleasant, 
 and we should have begun to find fault with the 
 author. The visiting of punishment upon some 
 one we deem worthy to receive it is grateful to 
 our feelings, while the triumph of whatever we 
 consider vicious and wicked is exceedingly offen- 
 sive. 
 
 Hence, tragedy, woe, suffering in the most hor- 
 rible forms, may impart a quality of interest to a 
 novel if they are so introduced as to agree with the 
 reader's sentiments. But this is not the whole of 
 the matter. They may interest quite irrespective 
 of our sympathies, where the predatory lusts are 
 so strong in the human mind that murder and 
 cruelty are relished for their own sake. There 
 are many people so constituted, to whom scenes 
 of carnage are agreeable. The most, indeed, 
 would relish a realistic account of a bull-fight, not 
 because they have any sympathy with either bull, 
 but because they like a fight. The same thing is 
 true of wars between human beings, though in the 
 latter case there is generally something more than 
 an interest in mere bloodshed. 
 
 We shall consider the bearings of this trait of
 
 I 4 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 human nature upon our subject more fully in a 
 subsequent chapter. It is mentioned now only to 
 illustrate the point that interest in a story means 
 the pleasurable interest which it excites in the 
 reader through his own sympathies and antipa- 
 thies. The extent of that interest among those 
 who read depends upon the number of people 
 who agree sufficiently in character to be similarly 
 affected. What would have pleased the ten just 
 men in Sodom, had there been that number, would 
 not interest the remaining thousands ; while a story 
 like " Mile. Giraud, ma Femme," * or a " Marriage 
 below Zero/'f which would no doubt delight the 
 multitudes of that city, would be abhorrent to 
 the ten. 
 
 For the purposes of this essay, the sources of 
 pleasure and pain may be grouped as aesthetic, sci- 
 entific, and moral, according to the lines marked 
 out in the preceding chapter. The true theory of 
 pleasure and pain is, in my judgment, that which 
 connects the two with the conservation of life. 
 Pleasures have relation to three general functions : 
 (i) growth ; (2) preservation of the integrity of the 
 mind and body ; (3) reproduction. Correspond- 
 ingly, pains have relation to: (i) retardation; (2) 
 disintegration ; (3) annihilation. Using the most 
 general terms, the pleasures of the mind are: (i) 
 to acquire ; (2) to possess and conserve ; and (3) 
 
 * Belot. A l an Dale -
 
 INTEREST. 1 5 
 
 to perpetuate.* Thus the fundamental and basic 
 pleasures of human life are appetitive, and all 
 others are differentiations from and refinements of 
 these. But the interests now under consideration 
 are wholly representative. They are not primary, 
 like the pleasure of repletion after a good meal. 
 They affect human happiness indirectly, not di- 
 rectly. Novels are not necessities of life, nor are 
 they immediately deleterious or destructive. 
 
 When we take note of the distinguishing char- 
 acters of aesthetic pleasures we shall readily per- 
 ceive the true location of those enjoyments we 
 derive from works of fiction. ^Esthetic pleasures 
 arise in connection with objects which are not 
 present for the purpose of ministering to our 
 necessities, or at least so far as that idea is not 
 suggested. Secondly, they arise in connection 
 with objects which are without disagreeable ac- 
 companiments, or so far forth as such objects are 
 without them. Thirdly, they spring up with ob- 
 jects whose enjoyments are not restricted to a 
 single mind, or which do not perish with the using. 
 A novel obviously satisfies the first and the third of 
 these conditions. It is a constructive product to 
 be enjoyed by many minds and not to perish with 
 the using. Whatever else it is, it has at least this 
 aesthetic basis. Its further and complete aesthetic 
 character is derived from its conformity to the 
 
 * " System of Psychology," by the present author, Part VIII., 
 ch. Ix.
 
 1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 second condition, and its success depends upon the 
 preponderance of the agreeable over the disagree- 
 able. 
 
 Here intervene the other offices of fiction which 
 we remarked in the last chapter. We can impart 
 information and can influence conduct by a story. 
 Hence the scientific and the moral quality of 
 fiction. The relations of these three elements 
 to each other we shall consider later. But it 
 may safely be said that, however much scientific 
 and moral characteristics in a novel may influence 
 us, we never can divest the work of its fundament- 
 ally aesthetic character ; and we shall have seriously 
 to ask whether we do not lose much more than 
 we gain when we attempt to subordinate that 
 which is in itself aesthetic to any sort of didactic 
 purposes.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 WHEN the fond parent wishes to impress some 
 truth upon the mind of his child so strongly as to 
 make certain that it will not be eradicated, he is very 
 apt to include it in a story. The familiar " Once- 
 upon-a-time " will detain the youngster's attention 
 and make him a ready listener, when if the fact, to 
 impart the knowledge of which is the object of the 
 tale, were stated baldly, the child would not re- 
 ceive it ; or, if he did, would not long remember. 
 Without the narrative there is no interest ; the 
 mind fails to take hold of and incorporate with 
 itself the things presented. 
 
 A great deal of valuable information has, no 
 doubt, been imparted to youth in this way. Tales 
 of hunting and fishing adventure, like Capt. Mayne 
 Reid's series, of which "The Boy Hunters" and 
 " The Young Voyageurs " are samples, have both 
 delighted and instructed many. So, likewise, 
 much mechanical and other applied science has 
 been inculcated by works like the " Rollo " * books. 
 
 * Abbott.
 
 1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 Again, Col. Thomas W. Knox, in his " Boy Trav- 
 eller " volumes, has been highly successful, setting 
 forth in a fictitious narrative much interesting and 
 valuable knowledge respecting remote lands of the 
 earth and their denizens. The object of such pro- 
 ductions is primarily educational. They aim to 
 instruct through fiction, employed as a device to 
 hold the attention and arouse interest. 
 
 This, of course, is not pure fiction in the sense 
 in which we are considering fiction as a theme ; 
 but story-telling of this sort illustrates most 
 plainly the use to which fiction may be put in 
 imparting knowledge. And it is by no means 
 unusual to find in works wherein the fictitious 
 narrative is the chief distinctive characteristic, 
 scientific information, upon which many readers 
 will lay the most stress ; and for which especially, 
 or even solely, will they esteem the production. 
 Not to speak further of natural history, though 
 there is not a little to be learned in this depart- 
 ment from many good novels, it is evident that 
 geography, physical and political, is taught very 
 extensively and effectively by tales which will not 
 be denied a place with fiction proper. If we class 
 descriptions of natural scenery and of towns in 
 this category, we shall at once meet with one of 
 the most charming features of story-composition 
 in all literatures. Such descriptions, indeed, per- 
 haps generally derive their greatest value from the 
 aesthetic elements, from the manner and style of
 
 SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF FICTION. ig 
 
 diction rather than from the knowledge imparted ; 
 but there is still a good deal of interest awakened 
 by the fact that the reader is learning something. 
 It is often because something may be acquired 
 from them, supposably true, that Walter Scott's 
 works are highly commended. Many a person has 
 obtained his ideas of the appearance of certain 
 localities entirely from some tale he has read. 
 Even in a writer who can by no means be classed 
 as a typically descriptive author (I use the term 
 as applied to natural scenery) we often come upon 
 pages of most excellent description, as the reader 
 of " Wanda " * will doubtless call to mind. Again, 
 the vivid pictures of shore and sea presented in 
 William Black's novels have possessed the minds 
 of many more completely than the movement of 
 life in the development of the plot. 
 
 Still more true is this line of remark when the 
 department of history is included. The historical 
 novel has been at times the leading type of fiction. 
 This resulted at one period from the eminence of 
 Scott, in England, and of Cooper, in America. 
 More recently, Louisa Muhlbach, whose history is 
 unhistorical, and Georg Ebers, who strives to be 
 as accurate as if writing scientific treatises, may be 
 cited as story-writers of this class. The best of 
 these authors have aimed to make their histori- 
 cal statements reliable. The critical and reading 
 
 * Ouida.
 
 20 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 public, recognizing that the purpose of the story 
 is partly to teach history, has insisted that what 
 is stated as fact shall be fact, and have estimated 
 the authors accordingly. 
 
 From the scientific point of view we have, 
 then, the geographical, the botanical, the zoologi- 
 cal, and the historical novel. We might add the 
 astronomical, if we take into account the Jules 
 Vernes who have written voyages to the moon 
 and dealt with life in the planets. The publica- 
 tion of the " Strange Manuscript found in a Cop- 
 per Cylinder"* would justify another class, that 
 of the geological novel. Taking all together, 
 natural history, in its various branches, and the 
 history of human life will comprise the scien- 
 tific elements in fictitious literature. 
 
 The last-named category, however, includes 
 much more than has been indicated. Its sugges- 
 tion leads us to a genuine scientific value of the 
 novel, which is often overlooked. A purely ficti- 
 tious representation of human life and society, 
 which is recognized as a type of actually existing 
 conditions, is of scientific importance, not only 
 because it is true, but because the truth cannot 
 be set forth in any other way. We cannot take 
 a definitely known individual, dissect his character 
 and exhibit his unworthy traits, without incurring 
 the risk of a libel suit ; or, if we make him too 
 
 * De Mille.
 
 SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF FICTION. 2 l 
 
 angelic, without exciting all sorts of ridicule from 
 those who do not agree with our estimate. More 
 than one writer has suffered seriously from even 
 the suspicion of having intended some living per- 
 son in the portrayal of a fictitious character. It 
 may be remembered that the author of a story 
 called " Cape Cod Folks " aroused great excite- 
 ment and indignation, not many years ago, because 
 it was believed she had maliciously " done up " a 
 whole community. Nor is it always safe to tell 
 the truth about the dead. It is very hard to get 
 just historical accounts of popular idols. The first 
 edition of Sparks's " American Biography " con- 
 tained mention of a certain liaison of George Wash- 
 ington ; but so much disfavor was" manifested on 
 this account that it was taken out of subsequent 
 editions. It would have been very dangerous to 
 the author to have published even ten years ago 
 that circumstantial account of Abraham Lincoln's 
 unhappy domestic life which Mr. Herndon's book 
 has just presented.* The diary of the Emperor 
 Frederick III. of Germany is sealed up, and no 
 one can get at it, much less use it for historical 
 purposes. Not only is it impossible oftentimes to 
 print correct biographies, but any direct criticism 
 of governmental, religious, and social institutions 
 is utterly forbidden at many times and in many 
 places. The only way in which people can be 
 
 1889.
 
 22 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 fully instructed, then, as to social conditions is by 
 fiction. The works of M. Zola and the Russian real- 
 ists are examples of this kind of education. The 
 only method of obtaining any thorough knowl- 
 edge, at least of contemporary character and so- 
 ciety, its formative influences, the ultimate results 
 of particular courses of action, existing tendencies 
 toward weal or woe, is through the analysis and 
 depiction of the novelist. The novel, then, has a 
 very decided and marked psychological, ethologi- 
 cal, and sociological utility.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MORAL VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 ALMOST everybody assumes that a book must 
 have a purpose, and people are incorrigible in 
 their habit of inquiring what its effect is likely to 
 be. They mean, its moral effect. If they con- 
 sider this to be bad, they very unwarrantably 
 jump to the conclusion that it proceeded from 
 an evil purpose. Then both the book and the 
 author are condemned. 
 
 If an author's object apparently be to interest 
 or amuse, with no ulterior moral aim, the mass 
 of readers generally put his work on a lower plane. 
 If a didactic character is evident, the book is much 
 better. Many persons are always looking for a 
 " Hczc fabula docet" and are much disappointed 
 if they fail to find it. I fancy this peculiarity 
 arises simply from the fact that a book was pri- 
 marily, and is now among those who read little 
 regarded solely, as an instrument of education. 
 Books are given children to teach them some- 
 thing reading itself, spelling, computation, geog- 
 raphy. When a story appears the first questions 
 asked are, " What is it for ? " " What does it
 
 24 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 teach ? " " What good does it do ? " It is easy to 
 answer these questions if applied to the zoological 
 novel. Neither is the historical tale troublesome. 
 It is a good thing to know something about ani- 
 mals, and the history of human events is not to 
 be despised. 
 
 It takes a cultivated mind to enjoy flowers for 
 their own sake. A farmer may be interested in 
 apple-blossoms, but it is not for their beauty that 
 he looks at them. It is solely as an indication of 
 the coming yield of fruit. If he should meet with 
 a strange plant in the woods, his attention attracted 
 by a highly colored flower, his first thought would 
 be, " What is it good for ? " If it be of no use, or 
 in any wise deleterious, it is cut down ruthlessly 
 as a noxious weed. Precisely so does the average 
 mind, and, I am sorry to say, sometimes the culti- 
 vated mind, deal with literature. If it does not 
 directly teach something useful or good, it is re- 
 jected. 
 
 Now, a novel may have a moral effect in many 
 ways. It may influence positively to good con- 
 duct and away from evil. It also may have nega- 
 tive effects in the same direction, or the opposite. 
 There may be interjected here and there moral 
 precepts and reflections, with arguments to prove 
 how much better it is to worship Jehovah than 
 Baal. Stories are frequently told in this style and 
 win great popularity. No doubt, so far as they 
 influence at all, they are morally beneficial. They
 
 MORAL VALUE OF FICTION. 2 $ 
 
 are not very nourishing, however. Direct preach- 
 ing in a " moral tale " is not as readily absorbed 
 as natural history details are in the zoological 
 novel. It is much more tiresome. But if a moral 
 or religious tale could be constructed after the 
 Salvation Army manner of doing things with 
 much that is startling and sensational I am not 
 at all sure that the interlarded sermons would not 
 have more effect. 
 
 But this method of improving character and 
 conduct is very crude and is the least effectual. 
 A much greater influence can be exercised by the 
 development of plot in such a way as to indicate 
 the true relations of cause and effect in human life, 
 showing the results of good and evil conduct re- 
 spectively. With regard to this, moral sentiment 
 has generally demanded a triumph of the good 
 in the event. Successful villany, in a narrative, 
 makes the reader uncomfortable at least ; and in 
 youthful or unbalanced minds may inspire to a 
 criminal course of life, through false apprehensions 
 of what such a life will bring. Thrilling stories of 
 crime have often induced to the commission of 
 crime. Boys every now and then run away from 
 home to fight Indians, after reading " dime 
 novels." Occasionally they try highway robbery 
 or burglary under similar inspiration. Therefore, 
 when a story exalts the criminal as a hero, and 
 makes his escape from justice matter for congrat- 
 ulation, the effect upon dispositions and conduct
 
 2 6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 is no doubt immoral. To what extent this im- 
 moral force is derived from the essential untruth 
 of such tales is a very serious question, to which 
 we shall refer in another chapter. At all events, 
 they are not read by the experienced and edu- 
 cated, and their influence over the most of those 
 who would read them is doubtless bad. 
 
 It would be going very far, though, to condemn 
 all novels which do not finally make their virtuous 
 characters happy and duly punish all their bad 
 people. When we come to consider the aesthetic 
 value of fiction and to make comparisons we shall 
 find there is- intrinsic morality in a work of art. 
 But it is undeniable that the demand for a moral 
 purpose in a novel is so extensive that the ques- 
 tion of moral influence must be regarded seriously. 
 Making heroes of murderers and pirates, and al- 
 lowing them a reasonably happy and successful 
 life is certainly not wholesome from the moralist's 
 standpoint. A similar condemnation is apt to fall 
 upon the novelist who permits a good principle to 
 be vanquished in argument by a bad one. Sophis- 
 tries, evil insinuations, lies of all sorts can be made 
 to proceed from the mouth of characters in a 
 story and stand without effective opposition or 
 contradiction. No doubt harm may be done in 
 this way. False ideas may be inculcated and 
 youth corrupted. But we should be careful to 
 remember that there are differences of opinion as 
 to what is truth and what is truly moral. If a
 
 MORAL VALUE OF FICTION. 27 
 
 Russian liberal were to write a romance in which 
 persons appear who give utterance to revolution- 
 ary sentiments, the book would be considered by 
 the government to be pernicious and would be 
 suppressed. One living in a free country, how- 
 ever, would see nothing bad in it, and would 
 rather applaud the sentiments. It must not be 
 forgotten that one great value of fiction is that it 
 may be made the vehicle of the free expression of 
 opinions. Our disapproval of books as immoral 
 should therefore be given cautiously. We must 
 first be sure what is moral and what is immoral. 
 
 This whole subject of moral value in works of 
 fiction, being educational, relates principally to 
 undeveloped minds ignorant or easily influenced 
 adults, or the young of both sexes. The solici- 
 tude of parents for the welfare of their children 
 makes them extremely jealous of any hurtful in- 
 fluences. A grown person of average intellect- 
 ual strength is not so likely to be moved toward 
 evil courses by reading a romance as he is by a 
 conversation with a plausible but wicked acquaint- 
 ance. There is an element of personal magnetism 
 in the latter case which is wanting in the former. 
 The influence of the book is not a persisting one ; 
 though there may be conviction flowing from it, 
 there is little persuasion. It may well be doubted 
 if fully matured persons are often seduced into 
 harmful courses, or materially modified in char- 
 acter by a novel. But it is quite true, on the
 
 28 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 other hand, that thought has been stimulated and 
 important popular movements inaugurated and 
 forwarded by works of fiction. " Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin" is a very conspicuous illustration. A 
 work that makes an impression in this way should 
 never be condemned as immoral, whatever lesson 
 it may inculcate. It is an expression of the 
 thought in the minds of multitudes and symp- 
 tomatic of an evolutionary movement that cannot 
 be suppressed and will issue in some change 
 necessitated by present conditions. Agitation 
 and discussion is precisely what is most needed. 
 And while we may totally disagree with the ideas 
 of the author, the morality of liberty of expres- 
 sion is supereminent in such a case. 
 
 We shall not do more in this chapter than to 
 point out very generally the sources of moral 
 qualities in a work of fiction. It is sufficiently 
 clear, I trust, that they are the possible and 
 patent educational influences. This, of course, 
 merely introduces the topic; which will continu- 
 ally recur, and, indeed, be forced upon us as we 
 proceed. But it is better that we now turn to 
 look upon the artistic side of the general subject.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE /ESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 IN Chapter II. we found the work of fiction to 
 be a product of the constructive powers of the 
 human intellect ; such product being an object 
 not administering directly to our appetitive neces- 
 sities nor satisfying them ; an object susceptible 
 of universal enjoyment, not perishing with the 
 using ; an object in which the disagreeable is 
 minimized. The constructive power is the innate 
 activity of the mind, now appearing as a reaction 
 to environing forces, now as the initiatory power 
 which operates upon the external world, the 
 understanding which, as the German philosophers 
 say, " makes nature." 
 
 Mental activity is a source of pleasure in itself, 
 as is exemplified in the play-impulse. Mere exer- 
 cise of intellectual powers is a joy, because that 
 exercise tends toward growth and preservation. 
 Inaction, save as a restful alternative, is disin- 
 tegrating and destructive. Play, or the exercise 
 of activity spontaneously without regard to fur- 
 ther utility than lies in the exercise itself, is 
 characteristically aesthetic. When an end is pro-
 
 30 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 posed, the movement toward that end is work, 
 but in the achievement there arise emotions which 
 are again of an aesthetic nature. Doing some- 
 thing, producing, accomplishing, causing, making 
 experience, making nature all involve that cre- 
 ative activity which lies at the foundation of art. 
 There is truth in what M. Lucien Arrat says:* 
 " L'tttment esthttique du travail ce nest pas Fidee 
 d un effet utile, mats celle de la difficult^ vaincue, et 
 qui semble vaincue gratuitement" f 
 
 It is undoubtedly the case, therefore, that any 
 object fabricated by the hand of man which gives 
 the impression of skill, of difficulties overcome, of 
 a triumph of mind over matter, of successful con- 
 trivance, so far forth produces an aesthetic effect 
 upon the spectator. This often contributes to 
 heighten the admiration which comes from 
 thoughts of the utility of the object. Frequently 
 to the artistic mind it is the principal element in 
 whatever pleasure is experienced. But, after all, 
 we have indicated here only rudimentary and 
 undifferentiated art. We are directed, however, 
 to the subjective and creative character of artistic 
 products. The idea of skill, of accomplishment, 
 is always present in the fine as well as the me- 
 chanic arts. 
 
 * " La Morale dans le Drame 1'Epopee et le Roman," ch. vi. 
 
 f " The aesthetic element in work is not the idea of a useful 
 effect, but that of difficulty conquered, and which seems con. 
 quered freely."
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 31 
 
 The constructive activity is synthetic, as indeed 
 is all mental activity. It unites a manifold of 
 particulars into a whole, whose parts have an 
 organic connection. It aims primarily to make 
 this whole distinct and well defined. Although it 
 uses the particular parts as material, it associates 
 them into a unity clearly separate from other 
 unities. This does not require that the parts 
 shall be distinctly apprehended in detail. They 
 must, however, be consonant with and contribute 
 to the general unity. They are subordinate to 
 the whole, which is the ideal construction. Hence 
 a work of art must be an evident unity, capable 
 of making an impression as such upon the one 
 who is to enjoy it. Whether or not it have 
 a "purpose," it must, at least, have a plan. It 
 must have an idea, to which the details of work- 
 ing out are relevant and homogeneous. The gen- 
 eral effect on the beholder must be centripetal, 
 not centrifugal. The attention must be concen- 
 trated, not scattered. 
 
 The voluntary action of the mind is always 
 selective. It chooses some things and rejects 
 others. Its movement, already remarked, is toward 
 pleasure and away from pain. Nevertheless, it 
 cannot wholly escape the latter. Painful experi- 
 ences force themselves upon us. The ends, then, 
 which we propose to ourselves are ends of happi- 
 ness, misery being eliminated. Thus we form 
 ideals of existence, which are of better states and
 
 32 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 conditions than we actually encounter, and which 
 we are all the time endeavoring to realize. So in 
 art it is not enough merely to construct a unity of 
 harmoniously related parts, but this integer must 
 be so selected as to arouse agreeable feelings. It 
 must satisfy our ideals of excellence. The sight 
 of a beautiful landscape inspires pleasure of an 
 aesthetic character. The reproduction of this land- 
 scape upon canvas or paper by the hand of the 
 artist also gives delight, because it is a representa- 
 tion of a pleasurable experience. The same land- 
 scape, however, may be painted so as to fail utterly 
 in repeating the agreeable impression. This may 
 arise from inaccuracy in depicting the various ob- 
 jects. It also may occur because the artist fails 
 to select those objects in the view which are most 
 essential in creating the impression. If he intro- 
 duces these last with correctness, he may be inac- 
 curate in minor features and may even omit a 
 great many things altogether. If he gets the right 
 perspective, the true proportions of objects, the 
 proper lights and shades, the general effects of 
 color, he is successful. It is indispensable that he 
 understand how to seize upon the chief factors 
 of the total impression and reproduce them with 
 fidelity in the picture. 
 
 Again, an aesthetic pleasure may be secured if 
 the artist changes the landscape by varying its 
 essential features, leaving out some and introduc- 
 ing others not in the scene originally. If this be
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 33 
 
 done in obedience to an ideal of improvement, so 
 long as those congruities are preserved which are 
 essential to the conception of a landscape, the 
 result is truly aesthetic and may be more pleasing 
 than in the former case. The effect would be 
 greatly marred, indeed, if the picture purported to 
 present a view of some particular locality with 
 which the beholder is familiar and he should see 
 that it was untrue. But if it were so named as to 
 indicate no special location, its artistic character 
 would not be impaired by the departure from 
 reality of which I have spoken. 
 
 Once more, an entirely imaginative landscape 
 may be painted which will elicit admiration and 
 seem more wonderful than any copy from nature, 
 provided always that there are maintained faith- 
 fully " les rapports et les dtpendances mutuelles des 
 parties." * The idea of a landscape must be 
 realized and no violence done to it. Idealizing 
 and improvement there may be, but not carried 
 so far as to destroy the distinctive character of the 
 picture. 
 
 We are now prepared for the remark that there 
 may be an aesthetic value in a copy of nature, 
 because nature is continually developing aesthetic 
 emotions in the human mind. But not all nature 
 does this. Much that we encounter in the physical 
 world arouses feelings the very reverse of aesthetic. 
 
 * " The harmony and organic connection of the parts." Veron.
 
 34 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 The mere copying of a natural object does not 
 result in a work of fine art. It may have that 
 artistic merit of which we spoke a little while ago, 
 which springs merely from the fact that it is a 
 work of skill, a use of matter by mind, a combining 
 of earth and oil to express an idea. But this con- 
 sideration may be wholly offset by the repellent 
 character of the object itself, respecting which 
 there can be no interest in reproducing. More is 
 required. It is aesthetic nature which must be 
 reproduced to be of the most complete and the 
 highest artistic value. The natural, if it be non- 
 aesthetic, must be excluded, regarding the matter 
 from the purely aesthetic point of view. 
 
 It is thus evident that we may justifiably divide 
 works of art into two grand divisions, the one of 
 reproductive and the other of creative art. As 
 has been seen, the two may be mingled in the 
 same product ; but the distinction will be found a 
 useful one and important to be held in mind in 
 judging artistic work. 
 
 Applying the foregoing observations to the form 
 of literary construction which is the subject of 
 this essay, we discover that we have both the 
 reproductive and the creative varieties in varying 
 proportions. At first thought we might say that 
 the zoological and the historical novel furnish the 
 best examples of the former. But, in fact, to the 
 extent that they are zoological and historical, 
 they are not fiction at all. They are supposably
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 35 
 
 science, and though science may be presented 
 artistically and have an aesthetic value, it is not 
 there that we look for pure art. But whether 
 history, natural or political, be written in an artistic 
 manner, it is not our theme at present. Where, 
 then, do we find reproductive art in fiction ? 
 
 We shall find it in description of scenery, of 
 inanimate and animate objects, of the multifold 
 products of man's activity which conform to the 
 things seen in actual experience. These various 
 objects may or may not be really existent. Fre- 
 quently they are, but are transplanted from one 
 locality to another with perhaps very different 
 surroundings. Or, the scene may be laid in a 
 well-known place and accurate descriptions given 
 of what may actually be found there. This is the 
 most common method of providing a setting for 
 the human characters, of establishing a habitat for 
 the movement of life. Where this is done, pre- 
 cisely the same principle applies as in the case of 
 the landscape painter. The description must be 
 of such a quality as to produce an aesthetic effect. 
 The essential features must be seized upon and 
 brought to the mind of the reader. 
 
 Reproductive art is also manifested in the char- 
 acters and their action. However much the 
 author may strive, he cannot get out of the circle 
 of human experience. Men must be men, and 
 women must be women. They must have pas- 
 sions, opinions, motives, instincts, appetites.
 
 36 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 Knowing this, very many writers think the safe 
 way is to study some individual, who becomes the 
 prototype of the character in fiction. The shrewd 
 Yankee, the fickle Frenchman, the rampant and 
 obstreperous Irishman, the phlegmatic German, 
 the comical Negro, who are familiar in works of 
 fiction, have frequently their originals in real life. 
 All the physical and moral traits of humanity are 
 continually reproduced in current stories, the suc- 
 cess of which is due in many instances to the ac- 
 curacy of reproduction. This representation is, 
 of course, extended to the general aspects of so- 
 cial life in the way mentioned in the last part of 
 Chapter III. The historical novelists have done 
 this very extensively, but not more, after all, than 
 the schools of analytical writers. Dickens, Thack- 
 eray, Bulwer, George Eliot, Balzac, Mr. Howells, 
 Dr. Edward Eggleston all present distinct, evi- 
 dent, and powerful reproductions of real life and 
 society. They reflect the times and the courses 
 of events of the places and periods of which they 
 write. 
 
 But just at this point we ought to note the en- 
 trance of creative art. Even if a character have a 
 living prototype, it is easy to modify it according 
 to the author's fancy. The plan of his work may 
 require the development of such thought and 
 action that a living person may be taken as a 
 basis, and traits he has not may be added unto 
 him. Then, again, some curious, well-emphasized
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 37 
 
 trait may be subtracted, like the rib from Adam's 
 side, and a wholly ideal being may be constructed 
 around it. Probably the most of novelists' char- 
 acters are made up in this way or are composite 
 productions, a head being obtained from one 
 model, a heart from a second, a virtue from this, 
 a weakness from the other, and so on. It is hard 
 to separate the representation from the creation. 
 
 Another form of mixed reproduction and imag- 
 ination occurs where the writer portrays an his- 
 torical personage with some foundation of fact, 
 supplemented by the writer's general conception, 
 the truth of which is not, perhaps cannot be, 
 ascertained. The hero is endowed with such 
 qualities as the author thinks a man of his deeds 
 ought to have had, and is made to act as such a 
 personage would most probably have acted. In 
 Miss Muhlbach's novels, before referred to, there 
 is much of this sort of writing. Historical novels 
 generally abound in such portraiture. Mr. Rider 
 Haggard exemplifies it in " Cleopatra," both with 
 respect to the Egyptian queen and to Antony. 
 George Eliot has developed her Savonarola in 
 "Romola" after this fashion. In all such in- 
 stances only study will enable the reader to know 
 what is historical and what is imaginative. Some- 
 times investigation will reveal fidelity, and at 
 others gross libels will be found to have been per- 
 petrated. 
 
 Beyond productions like these, creative art goes
 
 38 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 on to limitless constructions of ideal characters, 
 in which one sentiment or another dominates, 
 and in which all possible evolutions and involu- 
 tions of human feeling, thought, and volition are 
 traced to their ultimate consequences, as imag- 
 ined. The world of fiction is peopled with unique, 
 grand, dwarfed, virtuous, wicked, beautiful, ugly 
 individualities, which impress themselves in one 
 way or another upon the readers of books, always 
 exciting interest and receiving now admiration, 
 and now detestation, according to the sentiments 
 of those who make their acquaintance. 
 
 In depicting the action and reaction of social 
 forces there is the same scale of variation, from 
 simple reproduction to the most lofty ideal con- 
 ceptions of what ought to be. Heaven has been 
 imagined, and heavens on earth. The ideals of 
 beauty intrinsic, of the beauty there is in truth 
 and in goodness, have been used to produce and 
 place before others, as universal property to be 
 enjoyed forever, enough works of marvellous crea- 
 tion to stand, not only as monuments of what 
 heights man's genius has already reached, but also 
 to declare unto us convincingly the limitless ca- 
 pacities of the human mind. 
 
 We have hitherto been inquiring what objects 
 arouse aesthetic feelings, but this does not wholly 
 fulfil the requirements of the theme. We shall 
 be unable to understand thoroughly the aesthetic 
 value of fiction without a deeper study of the
 
 ESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 39 
 
 nature and meaning of aesthetic emotions in gen- 
 eral. If works of art are those which arouse such 
 emotions, what are the emotions themselves and 
 their value? We shall, perhaps, be able to answer 
 these questions sufficiently without wearying the 
 reader too much with psychological detail ; but, 
 in order to find any answer, a reference to the 
 laws which express the constitution of the human 
 mind is necessitated. 
 
 Pleasure satisfies. It suspends action except in 
 furtherance of its continuance. It is an end in 
 itself. It is a concomitant of vitality, an expres- 
 sion of the fulness of life. The more complete 
 and unalloyed it is, the stronger is the sense of 
 vital power, of permanence, of exhaustless energy. 
 But change is necessary to life and to pleasure. 
 Monotony of pleasure is a pain which moves to 
 new exertion to attain something else. Life, then, 
 is a struggle between life-giving and life-maintain- 
 ing forces on the one hand, and disintegrating 
 and destroying forces on the other. But pleasure 
 is not wholly correspondent with physical life ; 
 that is to say, the deterioration of the body and 
 the failure of its appetites does not take away the 
 capacity for pleasurable experience. This is ow- 
 ing to the representative power which in one of 
 its exercises reproduces, though in less degree 
 of intensity, pleasures previously enjoyed ; and in 
 another out of the elements of past experiences 
 produces new objects which excite pleasure. " Le
 
 40 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 plaisir est la jouissance actuelle des sens ; c'est une 
 satisfaction enttire qui on leur accorde dans tout ce 
 quils appe'tent ; et lorsque les sens epuise's veulent du 
 re"pos ou pour reprendre haleine ou pour se refaire, 
 le plaisir devient de r imagination ; elle se plait a 
 re'fle'chir au plaisir que sa tranquillite' lui procure"* 
 It is quite true, therefore, that pleasures of imag- 
 ination, both reproductive and productive, may 
 subsist in the midst of racking pain and with the 
 knowledge that life is ebbing. But when they 
 are felt under such circumstances, it is still the case 
 that they are identical in their nature with pleas- 
 ures experienced in exuberant health. There 
 comes into the consciousness the same feeling of 
 satisfaction, of rest, of life, though it may not be 
 complete or long-continued. For the moment, 
 however, the mind is lost in a conscious state 
 which is good in itself, though it almost instantly 
 be recalled to painful conditions. In the experience 
 of pleasure the person is taken out of time and 
 motion and change, into eternity, permanence, rest. 
 He simply is ; past and future are irrelevant. But 
 pain, even if it be merely uneasiness, reveals the 
 need of action and stimulates him to effort to real- 
 
 * " Pleasure is the actual experience of the senses. It is a com- 
 plete satisfaction accorded to them in all that they seek ; and when 
 the senses, wearied, need repose, either to take breath or to ac- 
 quire new strength, pleasure becomes an affair of the imagination. 
 This faculty takes delight in reflecting on the pleasure its own tran- 
 quillity procures for it." "Memoires de Jacques Casanova de 
 Seingalt"
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE OF FICTION. 41 
 
 ize happiness under the guidance of his recollec- 
 tions of what has been and his ideals of what may 
 be. 
 
 Pleasure is thus always the same thing. It is 
 an ultimate consciousness which can only be un- 
 derstood by experience. It is the sense of life, 
 of existence, and the powers which existence im- 
 plies. It varies only in respect to quantity. A 
 pleasure as pleasure is only greater or less than 
 another. The different kinds of pleasures receive 
 their distinctive character wholly from intellectual 
 attachments. We describe and define our pleas- 
 ures and pains according to our intellectual ap- 
 prehension of the objects which are before the 
 mind when the pleasure is present, and which 
 may be regarded as its causes.* Therefore, hav- 
 ing indicated what pleasurable feeling is in itself, 
 when we say that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure 
 aroused by those objects which we have defined 
 as aesthetic, we have compassed the whole matter, 
 so far as general explanation is possible. But in 
 order to a clearer understanding, there are some 
 things yet to be noted. 
 
 ./Esthetic objects are chiefly apprehended by 
 the eye and the ear. A more close analysis would 
 show, I am persuaded, that these are not the 
 only aesthetic senses ; but for the purposes of 
 this treatise we can rest content with taking into 
 
 * " System of Psychology," chaps, lix., xliii., xlv., lii.
 
 42 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 account only objects of sight and hearing, inas- 
 much as they furnish substantially all the mate- 
 rial for aesthetic perception as it is commonly un- 
 derstood. These, however, are distinctively and 
 prominently representative senses, their objects 
 deriving importance chiefly from and producing 
 their effects mainly by means of the associations 
 which they evoke in the mind. This is pecul- 
 iarly the case with objects of sight in general 
 and with spoken language. We need not here 
 treat of the primary stimulation of light and 
 sound, which is sensational in its nature. It is 
 through perceptive activity, forming distinct and 
 definite objects of their material and connecting 
 these with past experiences, that the eye and the 
 ear attain their transcendent importance as minis- 
 ters to mental life. 
 
 It should be observed, further, that pleasures 
 from aesthetic objects are contemplative. The 
 one who enjoys them is not striving. He is a 
 recipient, his mind only and not his body being 
 active. He looks upon a beautiful picture or 
 statue. He quiescently reads a book or listens to 
 music. These stir within him thoughts and feel- 
 ings of past delights and awaken ideals of new 
 ones with inspirations to their realization. But it 
 must not be thought that contemplation means 
 intellectual inactivity. On the contrary, the rep- 
 resentative or imaginative activities are stimulated, 
 the increase of energy coming with the pleasur-
 
 VALUE OF FICTION. 
 
 43 
 
 able contemplation expending itself in further 
 reminiscence, in constructions, and in volitional 
 impulses. And this leads us back to our observa- 
 tions at the commencement of the chapter, to the 
 effect that the joy of activity for its own sake is 
 aesthetic. Play is the symbol of exuberance of 
 life and indicates strength and happiness, over- 
 flowing and demanding expenditure. The same 
 fulness of vitality urges the artist to reproducing 
 and creating, and, in our contemplation of his 
 work, enters into our own pleasure and excites 
 that admiration of skill of which we also spoke. 
 
 If we have correctly apprehended the nature of 
 aesthetic pleasure, it will be seen that the appreci- 
 ation of art and the art-impulse are inherent in 
 the nature of man as a conscious being, and are 
 not the products of civilization. They exist in the 
 savage as well as in the enlightened, though ex- 
 hibited in a different way. If only there be a 
 representative faculty, there must be art and ob- 
 jects which excite aesthetic interest ; and without 
 a representative power, consciousness is not possi- 
 ble. That these statements are historically true 
 will be seen by any one who familiarizes himself 
 with the habits of primitive and barbarous men. 
 He will find language, and with it oratory and 
 poetry, music, the dance, always religion and also 
 architecture ; all of which distinctly declare the 
 aesthetic sentiment. But as civilization advances, 
 the objects which develop aesthetic interests
 
 44 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 change, those which were potent in a lower stage 
 being of no influence or value whatever in the 
 higher. Even in the same grade of enlightenment 
 what will appeal to one will not appeal to another. 
 This brings to view again the importance of vari- 
 ations of individual temperament and character in 
 considering questions of the appreciation of works 
 of art, to which we alluded at the beginning of the 
 first chapter. 
 
 To return now to our special theme works 
 of fiction excite interest through language, and, 
 prominently, written language. Language ap- 
 peals both to the ear and the eye, but is primarily 
 a means of communication between human beings 
 addressed to the ear. If we bear this in mind, we 
 shall more readily arrive at the exact value of fic- 
 tion. We shall recur to the relations it bears to lit- 
 erature in general (Chapter I.). We shall perceive 
 that the story or tale is something which one per- 
 son (the author) has to tell others about real or 
 possible relations of human beings to each other 
 about man in his individual development and in 
 society. It is generically a means of communica- 
 tion between man and man. This is by no means 
 all, but it is at least this. But in order to be 
 aesthetic, it must be such a production as to inter- 
 est and please the reader. As already remarked, 
 it may accomplish this end either by reproduction 
 or creation. The question, then, is suggested : 
 How far should the writer of fiction cultivate re-
 
 AESTHETIC VALUE Of FICTION. 45 
 
 productive and how far creative art? Is the truest 
 art found in the one or the other ? If we say in the 
 latter, then how far is the former necessary for 
 creation, since creation is only a new combination 
 of the materials given us in nature ? These ques- 
 tions will introduce an important controversy and 
 will enable us to study a movement in literature 
 which has recently become quite predominant.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 IN considering the special topic of this chapter, 
 it will be advantageous for us to reflect upon the 
 thought contained in the two following quotations. 
 The first is from a " History of English Prose 
 Fiction," by Bayard Tuckerman : " A novelist, 
 then, is realistic or not realistic according to the 
 views which he and his readers entertain of nature. 
 To the optimist, to the youthful and romantic, 
 ' The Heart of Midlothian ' and ' Guy Manner- 
 ing ' will seem a truthful representation of life. 
 The more worldly and practical will find their 
 idea of reality in ' The Mill on the Floss,' in 
 ' Vanity Fair,' in the ' Prime Minister.' And 
 finally, those whose tastes or lot has kept them 
 ' raking in the dirt of mankind ' will think their 
 view of truth best expressed by ' Nana ' and 
 ' L'Assommoir.' " 
 
 The second passage is from the preface of 
 " Pierre et Jean," by M. Guy de Maupassant : 
 " Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, our 
 sense of taste, differing as they do, create as 
 many truths as there are men upon earth. And
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 47 
 
 our minds, which receive the instruction of these 
 organs, differently impressed, understand, analyze, 
 and judge as if each of us belonged to a distinct 
 race. Each one of us, therefore, forms for him- 
 self an illusion of the world, an illusion poetical, 
 sentimental, joyous, melancholy, unclean, or dis- 
 mal, according to his nature." 
 
 It seems, therefore, that whether a work con- 
 forms to nature or not depends in the reader's 
 mind upon what he knows of nature ; upon 
 nature as it is to him. If a story is true to life, 
 it means, to the ordinary reader at least, that life 
 with which he is acquainted. It must appeal to 
 his own experience. 
 
 Nevertheless, uninteresting subjects are often 
 by some sort of artistic power made interesting ; 
 the common, the unlovely arrest our attention 
 because of the excellence of the reproduction. 
 In his little treatise for beginners, entitled " The 
 Elements of Drawing," Mr. Ruskin says : " Go 
 into your garden or into the road and pick up 
 the first round or oval stone you can find, not 
 very white, nor very dark ; . . . now, if you 
 can draw that stone you can draw anything; I 
 mean, anything that is drawable. Many things 
 (sea-foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only 
 the idea of them more or less suggested ; but if 
 you can draw the stone rightly, everything within 
 reach of art is also within yours." So it is with 
 the portrayal of character. Select any person
 
 48 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 whom you know and will take as a model for your 
 description. No matter how common the person 
 may be, if you can reproduce him to the mind by 
 words, so that he stands forth a distinct, living 
 personal character, you have mastered the prime 
 essential of the art of fiction. Without the power 
 to do this you cannot succeed at all. If you have 
 that power, you may not, indeed, become a great 
 novelist, but you can write a novel. 
 
 Let us see what this portraiture involves and 
 perhaps the foregoing remarks will not appear so 
 enigmatical. You must, first of all, give some 
 idea of the habitation in which the soul dwells. 
 The man's personal appearance must somehow be 
 indicated. You can give his vital statistics, height, 
 weight, color of skin, facial contours, hair, chest 
 measurement ; you can add a minute catalogue of 
 his articles of apparel, setting them forth with sci- 
 entific accuracy ; you can endow him with a cane, 
 an umbrella, an eye-glass ; you can note his jewel- 
 lery. All this may take up pages of description, 
 but when you have written the items down you 
 have not proceeded very far in the accomplish- 
 ment of your purpose. Your model talks. He 
 says " Good morning " as you meet him, and 
 remarks that it is a fine day. He says many 
 other things, and you can put on paper all you 
 remember of what he has ever said. You ob- 
 serve him for several days and jot down all his 
 remarks. What you write you can add to the
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 49 
 
 vital statistics under a new heading: "Jenkins: 
 I. How he looks. II. What he says." You may 
 then go on to tell what he does habitually ; what 
 he eats and drinks, how he takes exercise, what 
 papers he reads, how often he blows his nose. 
 Having described his conversation, you can also 
 speak of his walk under a third caption: "III. 
 What he does." All this accomplished, you can 
 put the notes together and hold him out to the 
 reader triumphantly : " This is Jenkins ; I have 
 performed a work of art." Pardon, my friend, 
 you have done nothing of the sort. You have not 
 presented Jenkins at all. You evidently do not 
 know him, or if you do, you have given us no in- 
 telligible idea of him. 
 
 Yet who does not recall instances of tales in 
 which such a course is pursued ? Page upon page, 
 introducing a character with long, ambulatory de- 
 scription, full of adjectives of sonorous quality 
 the author evidently flattering himself, when he 
 has got through, that he has painted a portrait. 
 And the more minute the details are, the more 
 realistic is the narrative said to be. But this is 
 not realism, although many writers, from following 
 the realistic method, err in just this way, because 
 they do not understand that organic unity is the 
 essence of realism. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that it is impossible 
 to record all the particulars observable in any 
 person. If, then, we simply collect all we can 
 4
 
 go PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 and stop when we get tired, it very likely will be 
 the case that we have omitted the items which, if 
 seized upon, would have rendered all the rest 
 unnecessary. The salient, the characteristic feat- 
 ures are the ones needed ; and the power of the 
 writer lies in his ability to indicate these in a few 
 words of characterization, in an expression from 
 the mouth of the person portrayed, in some act 
 peculiarly and essentially his own. In actual con- 
 tact with people, we never take our impressions 
 by constantly dwelling upon details and adding 
 them up. A rapid, selective, associative process 
 goes on, by which a totality of impression is 
 formed, certain features or actions being fastened 
 upon as typical indicia of character. We, there- 
 fore, expect the literary artist to do for us what 
 our own minds would do if we saw the original of 
 the portrait. We want the living being, not a lot 
 of chopped fragments placed in contiguity. 
 
 If these remarks have force with respect to the 
 exhibition of a single character, they have still 
 more weight as applied to the method of repro- 
 ducing the relations of human beings in social life. 
 A power of selection is absolutely necessary, or, 
 instead of a clear and distinct picture, we shall 
 have a monotonous, incoherent collection of unre- 
 lated facts. As M. Lemaitre well says : * " The 
 artist, to transport his models into the romance or 
 upon the stage, is forced to choose, to retain from 
 * ' ' Les Contemporains " : Zola.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 51 
 
 the reality only the characteristic traits and so to 
 dispose of them as to cause the dominant charac- 
 ter to appear saliently, whether it be of a society 
 or of a single individual." 
 
 The reproduction of nature requires, therefore, 
 much more than a cataloguing of particular items. 
 But while this last will never produce a narrative 
 which is realistic in any proper sense of the term, 
 the process which the maker of the catalogue goes 
 through is, I think, indispensable to true artistic 
 reproduction. The trouble is, he too often gives 
 us his rough notes, his studies, instead of the 
 completed product to which we are entitled. 
 Neither an individual character nor the "milieu"* 
 can be successfully depicted without minute 
 anatomical dissection, without study of models in 
 every particular. The more profound, the more 
 thorough, the more indefatigable that study, the 
 greater the probability of success in the repro- 
 duction. The aim must be to see things as they 
 are, not as we fancy they may be. This requires 
 patient, careful, trained observation. It demands 
 a well-developed capacity for generalization, in- 
 cluding classification. It needs the highest culti- 
 vation of all the powers of association. The deep- 
 est analysis, the most comprehensive synthesis are 
 alike requisite. He has a very superficial idea of 
 the matter who supposes that we can see anything 
 whatever in the world about us merely by opening 
 * Environment.
 
 52 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 our eyes and allowing the light to form objects on 
 the retina. This affords us nothing but kaleido- 
 scopic pictures which are meaningless without the 
 synthetical activity of the mind. For the simplest 
 perceptions, memory, inference, imagination, and 
 generalization are called into use. It is the exer- 
 cise of these faculties that gives all their life to the 
 objects we perceive. 
 
 The understanding of character cannot be ef- 
 fected by simple observation of other men and 
 women as we see them in real life. Looks, words, 
 acts, can only be interpreted by a reference to 
 the author's own feelings, motives, desires. He 
 reads the doings of others in the light of his own 
 sentiments. Introspective analysis must go along 
 with extrinsic observation. He can note what a 
 person does under given circumstances, but he can- 
 not comprehend and explain that action except 
 by looking within his own consciousness. It thus 
 happens that he must infuse his own personality 
 even into that work which professes to be no 
 more than a reproduction. There is always dan- 
 ger that he may do this to an extent too great ; 
 but if he looks within for the general and typical 
 in human character and uses this as his measure, 
 he will not fail. 
 
 In order to appreciate variations from his own 
 standards and see clearly the operation of the 
 countless subtle influences that determine con- 
 duct, the writer must have quick and ample sym-
 
 REALISM AND -IDEALISM. 
 
 53 
 
 pathies. He must be able to put himself in the 
 place of his characters, feel the pressure of their 
 circumstances, observe the multifold impacts and 
 counter-actions of environing forces. Their inner 
 lives must not only be mirrored in his mind, but 
 he must live those lives himself, be moved with 
 their emotions and governed by their thoughts. 
 When thus possessed, with his interest centred 
 upon his model, he will behold the character as 
 it is, he will seize upon the essential and reject 
 the accidental ; the things that otherwise would 
 have escaped him are at once fastened upon, and 
 when he is ready to write, the literary artist will 
 find himself in the condition described by George 
 Eliot in " Adam Bede," when " words came to 
 me as tears come when the heart is full and we 
 cannot prevent them." These words will be the 
 right words, they will be clearly and distinctly 
 descriptive ; the portrait will stand out at last like 
 a sculptured figure of Apelles, " full, and round, 
 and fair." This and this only is realism worth 
 relying upon. 
 
 It will hence be seen that for reproductive work 
 in literary fiction that reproduces anything, very 
 much the same processes are gone through, and 
 the same powers of the mind called into exercise, 
 as in creative art. It must be evident that with- 
 out skill in reproduction, creation is not possible. 
 The latter is recombination, and unless the ele- 
 ments can be reproduced with accuracy and ful-
 
 54 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ness, there is little chance of a new unity being 
 produced which signifies anything to the mind. 
 Moreover, it is by the persistent, absorbing study 
 of existing objects, of things and of men as they 
 are, that the idealizing tendencies are stimulated 
 and set free. Having a realizing sense of present 
 woe, feeling sympathetically the pains of actual 
 conditions, the desire for improvement develops 
 ideals of such a betterment, the constructive ac- 
 tivity of imagination suggests means for attaining 
 it, and forms definite pictures of what joy it will 
 bring when secured. It is only by understanding 
 what is, by sympathy with sorrow arousing dis- 
 satisfaction in our minds, that creative intellect 
 will give us the conception of something better. 
 
 A very profound thought is often suggested to 
 me in connection with that picture by Raphael in 
 the Vatican, called the " School of Athens." It 
 is the thought of a teacher of mine,* who, calling 
 attention to the two central figures of the picture 
 Plato looking and pointing upward, Aristotle 
 with his gaze fixed upon the ground remarks: 
 " Philosophy, where its inspiration is highest and 
 its investigations are deepest, reaches the same 
 result, no matter in what direction it starts. 
 Plato, beginning with the heavens, looked so com- 
 prehensively that he saw the earth shining in the 
 light of the skies, and Aristotle, beginning with 
 
 * President J, H. Seelye, of Amherst College Inaugural 
 Address.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 55 
 
 the earth, looked so deeply that he saw the heav- 
 ens beneath it, the same heavens which Plato saw 
 above." In like manner with art and the artist : 
 he who fixes his eyes intently upon the earth, 
 which at first seems to limit and obstruct his 
 vision, if he continue his gaze with concentrated 
 attention, will discover that it becomes transfig- 
 ured, that the opaque inertness is interpenetrated 
 with light and life, until at last, through its clari- 
 fied form, he beholds also the shining of the stars. 
 
 I cannot but think this last method to be the 
 true one, both for thought and art. Our business 
 here is with the world about us. To deal with it, 
 we must know it ; and our knowledge is of the 
 concrete, of the " things we see." The immortal 
 and the eternal are only expressed to us in such 
 terms, and I am sure the soul of nature will be 
 found in the deep study of nature's work, rather 
 than in any inspiring effort toward infinite knowl- 
 edge, whose energy must needs be wasted in the 
 vastness and discreteness* of a space which sup- 
 plies no point of resistance, nothing upon which 
 concentration is possible. Said Gogol : " I have 
 studied life as it really is, not in dreams of the 
 imagination ; and thus I have come to a concep- 
 tion of Him who is the source of all life." 
 
 M. Zola is the great philosopher of the present 
 realistic or naturalistic movement in fictitious lit- 
 
 * I use this term in a philosophical sense discrete as opposed 
 to concrete.
 
 56 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 erature. In connection with what has been said, 
 it may be well for us to learn from him how the 
 realists themselves state their theory. According 
 to M. Zola, realism is but the application of the 
 scientific methods of observation and experiment 
 in the construction of a work of literary art. In 
 " Le Roman Experimental," M. Zola takes as a 
 text Claude Bernard's " Introduction a 1'Etude de 
 la Medicine exp^rimentale," and adopts precisely 
 the method therein set forth as the method the 
 " romancier " ought to pursue. This, to begin 
 with, is the close and accurate observation of 
 nature. But immediately a very important and 
 significant addition is made ; namely, experiment. 
 The reader is at once impelled to ask, What can 
 " experiment " possibly mean in the romancer's 
 art? Certainly no one can take living human 
 beings, put them into different environments at 
 will, and see how they behave. We can do this 
 with chemical elements, and to some extent with 
 animals, but our power in this respect is sadly lim- 
 ited when we deal with men and women. What 
 M. Zola means, therefore, must be something dif- 
 ferent. He explains, in the language of Bernard : 
 " We give the name of observer 'to him who applies 
 the processes of investigation, simple or complex^ 
 to the study of phenomena which he does not 
 vary, and which he consequently receives as nature 
 offers them to him. We give the name of experi- 
 menter to him who employs the processes of inves-
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 57 
 
 tigation, simple or complex, to vary or modify, in 
 accordance with some purpose, the natural phe- 
 nomena, and make them appear under circum- 
 stances or conditions in which nature does not 
 present them." The observer finds "the relations 
 which bind any phenomenon to its proximate 
 cause," * or, in other words, determines the con- 
 ditions necessary to the manifestation of this phe- 
 nomenon. Then the experimenter inaugurates, 
 institutes, a series of events in accordance with 
 the laws of cause and effect discovered. He cre- 
 ates personages and incidents to develop naturally 
 some idea, to illustrate some general fact which 
 he has observed. This " idea of experiment car- 
 ries with it the idea of modification. We set out 
 indeed from true facts, which are our indestructi- 
 ble foundation ; but to reveal the mechanism of 
 the facts we must have produced and directed the 
 phenomena. There lies our part of invention, of 
 genius in the work." " We ought to modify nature 
 without emerging from nature when we employ in 
 our romances the experimental method." "The 
 problem is to know what a particular passion, act- 
 ing in a particular environment and under particu- 
 lar circumstances, will produce, both as regards 
 the individual and social interest ; and an experi- 
 mental romance ' Cousine Bette/ for example 
 (Balzac) is simply the proems-verbal of the experi- 
 
 * This and the following quotations are in M. Zola's own words.
 
 58 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ment, which the romancer repeats under the eye 
 of the public. To sum up, the whole operation 
 consists in taking the facts of nature, then study- 
 ing the mechanism of the facts, treating them by 
 modifying according to circumstances and environ- 
 ment, without ever departing from the laws of 
 nature." " It is undeniable that the naturalistic 
 romance, as we understand it at present, is a true 
 experiment which the romancer makes upon man, 
 aiding it with observation." 
 
 It is quite apparent that the use of the term 
 experiment, as above, is unauthorized. The nov- 
 elist does not, in any proper sense, perform ex- 
 periments. He does not, in fact, vary actual con- 
 ditions, but only imagines them varied, deducing 
 certain conclusions on the supposition that they 
 are thus changed. In other words, he makes an 
 hypothesis, and, having settled his hypothetical 
 foundation or point of departure, he makes other 
 hypotheses conditioned thereon. There may be 
 found results in actual life which verify these and 
 enable us to formulate general truths about hu- 
 man nature. Again, such verification may not be 
 possible ; but, whether or no, the process is one 
 of making suppositions and drawing inferences. 
 Now an hypothesis is a scientific ideal. It is a 
 fiction, conformable to experience and analogy, 
 suggested according to probabilities, but not yet 
 confirmed by more certain evidence. It is a pro- 
 duct of the constructive powers of the intellect, a
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 59 
 
 work of the imagination ; in fine, a development 
 of creative art. Realism, then, requires both re- 
 production and creation, and, according to M. 
 Zola, the latter would seem to be of the greater 
 importance. 
 
 Let us also at this point take account of the 
 opinions of M. de Maupassant, who is not so 
 much of a philosopher as M. Zola, but is a better 
 artist. He, however, has his theory with regard to 
 works of fiction, like the author of " Les Rougon- 
 Macquart," only he is more catholic. He does 
 not despise the idealist, who is in his judgment 
 really a poet, but he prefers the realistic or natu- 
 ralistic method for prose fiction. He is a realist, 
 though not a bigoted one. In his view the ro- 
 mance of to-day writes "the history of the heart, 
 the soul, the intelligence, in the normal state. To 
 produce the effect at which he aims that is to say, 
 the impression of simple reality and to make 
 clear the artistic lesson which he wishes to draw 
 from it that is, the true revelation of contem- 
 porary man to himself he ought to employ 
 only those statements whose truth is unexception- 
 able and certain." But from the point of view of 
 the realists themselves,* their theory requires 
 some departure from that expressed by the words 
 " Rien que la vtritt et toute la vtritt" f For, their 
 
 * I here slightly paraphrase the author's text in the preface of 
 " Pierre et Jean." 
 
 f " Nothing but the truth ; and the whole truth."
 
 60 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 intention being to define the philosophy of certain 
 constant and evident facts of human nature, it is 
 necessary to correct the results of actual observa- 
 tion to accord with probabilities, since the true 
 sometimes is not probable. The true realist, then, 
 " if he be an artist, will seek, not to exhibit to us 
 a commonplace photograph of life, but to give us 
 a vision of it more complete, more striking, and 
 more authentic than the reality itself." Repro- 
 ducing the truth, then, consists in giving a com- 
 plete vision of the truth, following the natural 
 logic of the facts, and not transcribing them in 
 servile fashion in the " p$le-m$le " of their suc- 
 cession. " From these things I conclude that the 
 realists of talent ought rather to call themselves 
 Illusionists." 
 
 This is not very different from M. Zola's doc- 
 trine, though it is evident that M. de Maupassant 
 would sanction a wider departure from the stand- 
 ard of literal reproduction of nature than would 
 the author of " L'Assommoir." But both of them 
 insist, in theory, on the necessity for realism of se- 
 lecting the facts to be recorded and of tracing out 
 by imagination and inference the supposed nat- 
 ural sequences of those facts. They tell us in one 
 breath to follow and to depart from nature. We 
 cannot help feeling a little puzzled, therefore, to 
 discover what is the ground of their quarrel with 
 the " idealists." Why talk about " naturalism " or 
 " realism," as if it were something new, or as if
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 6l 
 
 it disclosed any new method in art ? All artists 
 who have succeeded have understood that it is 
 necessary to study nature ; that it will not answer 
 the purpose to paint a cow on the hillside in the 
 background of the picture so that it looks like a 
 guinea-pig in a tree in the foreground. The mas- 
 ters of fiction at all periods have appreciated that 
 they must draw their characters rightly and de- 
 pict their scenes accurately. The one must be 
 life-like, the other natural, and in accordance with 
 probabilities and congruities. The fiction writer's 
 art must necessarily be both reproductive and 
 creative. We have just seen how creation is ab- 
 solutely essential to reproduction ; and how if we 
 create we only recombine things that are produced 
 for us in nature. According to the realists them- 
 selves, so-called naturalism does not indicate any- 
 thing else beyond these two processes, both of 
 which must always be employed and which are 
 complementary to each other. 
 
 Thus, while we may agree with M. Zola that 
 " realism " expresses a method, we fail to perceive 
 how it declares a distinctive method, or one which 
 does not appertain to all art. It must, then, be in 
 the application somewhere that an issue is raised 
 between realists on the one side and idealists or 
 romantic novelists on the other.* Let us look to 
 this a little. 
 
 * I do not see that there is use any longer for the division 
 expressed by the word " classicism. "
 
 62 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 If a writer believes that he ought to study na- 
 ture thoroughly, letting nothing escape him, he 
 will devote himself to the observation of details 
 and concentrate his attention upon minutiae. Un- 
 less he is careful he will find himself absorbed in 
 these items. He will collect a multitude of small 
 unities without seeing the larger unity into which 
 they might be combined. These details will be 
 viewed as through a magnifying glass, which en- 
 larges their importance and at the same time nar- 
 rows the field of vision. There is danger that the 
 writer will forget that the reader can only become 
 interested by the same course of laborious appli- 
 cation that the author has pursued, losing sight 
 of the fact that the reader has not the inspiring 
 purpose which animates the chronicler. The lat- 
 ter will work to produce his story ; the former will 
 not work to read it. Now we find that the real- 
 ists exemplify the foregoing remarks very gen- 
 erally and characteristically, none more so than 
 the author of " Les Rougon-Macquart." He 
 declares that the writer of a romance " is not a 
 moralist, but an anatomist who contents himself 
 with telling what he finds in the human corpse."* 
 He says that the formula of the naturalistic method 
 in literature is the same as that of the sciences, 
 particularly physiology. It is a searching inquest 
 into the vital, organic facts of individual and so- 
 
 * " Les Romanciers Naturalistes."
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 63 
 
 cial life in all their manifestations. * So in his 
 novels he heaps up details in masses which are 
 appalling. His net gathers in the small and great. 
 Collecting everything, he must needs get many 
 things that are characteristic and striking. M. Le- 
 maitre remarks of him : f " One of the virtues of 
 M. Zola is indefatigable and patient energy. He 
 sees clearly concrete things, all the exterior of 
 life, and he has a peculiar faculty of describing 
 that which he sees. His is the power of retaining 
 and accumulating a greater quantity of details 
 than any other of the same school, and he does this 
 coldly, tranquilly, without weariness or disgust, 
 and giving to everything the same even prom- 
 inence and accent. The result is that the unity 
 of each picture lies no more as with the classic 
 writers in the subordination of the details (sel- 
 dom numerous) to the whole, but, if I may say so, 
 in their interminable monochromatic quality." 
 
 The public, said Stendhal in one of his letters, 
 wants a greater number of " petit J "aits vrais, upon 
 a passion or a situation in life." He himself tried 
 to satisfy them in his romances, and still more so 
 did his great follower Balzac, though I doubt if 
 the mind of the latter was occupied with the 
 thought of any magna instauratio in literature so 
 much as of himself doing a monumental work. 
 But Balzac exhibits the acme of realism in por- 
 
 * " Le Roman Naturaliste." f " Les Contemporains."
 
 64 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 trait painting, as M. Zola does in presenting the 
 " milieu" The record of two thousand of these 
 figures depicted with the utmost fineness of analy- 
 sis, with item upon item of traits, characteristics, 
 habits, appearances, entitles him to be called, in the 
 language of Taine, as next after Shakespeare, our 
 greatest magazine of documents on human nature. 
 " In Balzac," observes Henry James,* " every one 
 who is introduced is minutely described ; if the 
 individual is to say but three words he has the 
 honors of a complete enumeration." Like Stend- 
 hal, the author of the " Come'die Humaine " fully 
 believed " quit nest point de sensibility sans de"- 
 
 The naturalistic romancer who is thoroughly 
 possessed by his theory, in his anxiety to be faith- 
 ful to nature, even to the extent of recording the 
 revelations of the microscope upon anatomy, will 
 be prone to regard it as his duty to note down the 
 " details scabreux" Inasmuch as there are many 
 facts of individual and social life of which people 
 take as little account as possible, which are not 
 mentioned frequently in conversation, and upon 
 which the minds of most persons are not fond of 
 dwelling, novelists in general have not thought 
 proper to allude to them in their stories, or if they 
 deem it necessary to make allusion, they have 
 done so rather by suggestion and with a light 
 
 * " French Poets and Novelists." f Stendhal : " Son Journal."
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 65 
 
 touch. The " naturalist," however, because of 
 this very reticence, is at once impressed with a 
 sense of incompleteness and empiricism in the 
 works of such romancers, and with a solemn and 
 stern sense of obligation proceeds unflinchingly to 
 his task of remedying this deficiency. He does 
 not consider whether or not the unmentionable 
 objects or incidents are necessary to the plan of 
 his work. The fact that in real life they may be 
 present or may occur is enough to render it in- 
 cumbent upon him to introduce them in the story. 
 Hence they are presented with the same fulness 
 and minuteness of description as is everything 
 else, despite the probable shrinking of the reader. 
 Thus, say the realists, humanity is depicted as it 
 is and the whole truth is told. 
 
 This same relentless determination to seek and 
 reveal " toute la vtritd" influences also the choice 
 of subjects which for reasons like those mentioned 
 in the last paragraph have not been fully exploited. 
 M. Zola thus takes possession of a field which 
 before his time has not been at all thoroughly 
 worked. The phase of life chosen, together with 
 his naturalistic theory, hence compel the presenta- 
 tion to the reader of a great deal that is malodor- 
 ous, filthy, and disgusting. Ordure, putrescence, 
 beastliness must necessarily appear. The smell 
 of the butcher-shop, the sewer, the markets, the 
 gin-mill, the barn-yard is made real to us, or the 
 author aims to make it so. " Naturalism " is even 
 5
 
 66 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 carried so far that in " La Terre " an entire chap- 
 ter is devoted to one of the most obscene and of- 
 fensive incidents of intestinal and sphincterial ac- 
 tion. Similarly, by writers like M. de Maupassant, 
 the sexual appetite in all its developments, its im- 
 pulses, its vagaries, becomes the theme to be an- 
 alyzed and illustrated in the most minute partic- 
 ulars. So far are all these ideas of naturalism 
 carried that we are quite disposed to agree with 
 M. Paul Bourget in his characterization of the 
 "realists " as " the fanatics of modern literature ! " 
 The last-named critic has suggested another char- 
 acteristic tendency of current realism,* namely, 
 to produce a " mediocrity of heroes, a system- 
 atic diminution of the plot, a nearly complete 
 suppression of dramatic facts." He instances 
 "L'Education Sentimentale " of Flaubert as the 
 best-defined model of this sort of romance. To 
 this tendency I referred some pages back. M. Zola 
 justifies it, as well as he can, in his discussion. 
 The natural-history method has no need of plot. 
 " A novel was formerly a record of adventure ; it 
 is now a study of character. It was formerly ob- 
 jective dealing with the actions of men and their 
 outer surroundings. It is now subjective dealing 
 with the mental state, the impulses and passions, 
 the motives and principles of men, and using 
 events simply as the machinery of the story." f 
 
 * " Reflexions sur 1'Art du Roman." 
 f W. L. Alden, in the Galaxy.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 6/ 
 
 Inasmuch as the most are not cast in the heroic 
 mould, ordinary people appear as affected by their 
 different environments. The extraordinary is the 
 more improbable, both as to characters and in- 
 cidents. The greater portion of the situations 
 in actual life are not dramatic, and the more we 
 depart from what is common and recognized, the 
 more certain is there to be an air of unreality 
 about the narrative which is not congruous with 
 the scientific standard. It should be said that 
 writers who are in many respects realistic, in others 
 oppose many of the tendencies of realism of which 
 I have spoken and shall speak. Balzac certainly 
 has created some very extraordinary characters, 
 abnormal and sometimes bizarre, not at all com- 
 mon as specimens of the human race. But still 
 it is no doubt true that naturalism has abated 
 if not abolished the hero, diminished the plot- 
 interest, and turned the attention away from the 
 strictly romantic, using the old sense of the word. 
 Another application of the realistic idea is es- 
 pecially insisted on by M. Zola. That which it is 
 above all necessary to lay emphasis upon is the 
 impersonal character of the method. Personal 
 authority is at a minimum. We are held to an 
 exposition of how things come to pass, not why 
 they occur. We, the writers, are observers, and we 
 should assume a strictly scientific attitude. We 
 need not trouble others with our own notions of 
 what ought to be. Our own views, our approval and
 
 68 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 disapproval, our wishes, are quite irrelevant. Our 
 work is scientific criticism, declaratory of what is. 
 Our authority is only the facts. In fine, the writer 
 should keep himself and his personality wholly in 
 the background. Balzac, indeed, was a most in- 
 corrigible offender against this canon of fiction- 
 composition. He insists on philosophizing, moral- 
 izing, preaching everywhere, in season and out of 
 season. Nor is this all. He colors everything with 
 his own biases and prejudices. He cannot be re- 
 spectful to anybody he doesn't like. As Henry 
 James says, " He hated the bourgeoisie with an un- 
 mitigable hatred ; and more than most of his class, 
 he hated the provincial." Thus to him the world 
 was the world seen through his colored glasses a 
 fact which calls to mind the quotations with which 
 this chapter was opened. That was realistic which 
 agreed with his " illusion " of life. But whatever 
 we may think of M. Zola's practice, his theory re- 
 quires the elimination of personal prejudice. The 
 naturalistic romancer must be an impartial ob- 
 server and " experimenter," aiming only to reveal 
 the truth without comment. 
 
 Enough has been now said to enable us to make 
 a generalization which, very likely, has already sug- 
 gested itself to the reader. These specific applica- 
 tions of the doctrine of naturalism as made by the 
 chief of the " naturalists " all conduce to the re- 
 duction of art to science. Their principal aim is 
 to give us knowledge instead of aesthetic pleasure.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 69 
 
 They eliminate the artistic for the benefit of the 
 scientific. If everything is to be subordinated to 
 actuality, there is no room for ideality, except in 
 the form of hypothesis. M. Zola not only admits 
 this, but he urges on the extreme consummation. 
 " Enlarge still more the rdle of the experimental 
 sciences ; extend it even to the study of the pas- 
 sions and the portrayal of manners. You have 
 then our romances which seek the causes and ex- 
 plain them, which collect documents on human 
 nature, by which one can become master both of 
 man and his environment in such a way as to be 
 able to develop the good elements and extermi- 
 nate the bad. We do a work identical with that 
 of the scientists." * 
 
 No one can possibly appreciate the importance 
 of science more highly than I do, but I am 
 wholly unable to see why art is not desirable to 
 cultivate for its own sake. That our education 
 should be primarily and fundamentally scientific I 
 cannot doubt. And if men are willing to devote 
 their whole lives to the scientific study of any of 
 the phenomena of the universe, cosmological, bio- 
 logical, or sociological, confining their thought to 
 details and seeking knowledge by close analysis, 
 they have a noble ambition and are doing an hon- 
 orable and praiseworthy work. But why should 
 we, therefore, say that the imaginative or creative 
 
 * " Lettres a la Jeunesse."
 
 70 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 faculty, which is especially fitted to enable us to 
 transcend the world of the natural and real, should 
 be limited in its exercise to scientific, closely ver- 
 ifiable hypothesis? If we are able to conceive a 
 centaur, why should we be restrained from doing 
 so because no centaurs have yet been found ? If 
 the idealizing capacity brings pleasure, joy, de- 
 light, why not so employ it ? One would almost 
 think the naturalistic philosophers were becoming 
 ascetics ! Must artists die that savants may live ? 
 Because our work is on the ground, in the heat 
 and dust, may we never free ourselves, soar aloft 
 on the wings of the morning, and knock at the 
 portals of the day before it dawns ? 
 
 In the first place, it should be seen that scien- 
 tific fiction is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in 
 terms. So far forth as fiction is science it ceases 
 to be fiction ; so far forth as science is fictitious 
 it ceases to be science. If science be all in all, 
 would it not be better to leave out the fictitious 
 element altogether from literature and devote our- 
 selves to exact descriptions of actual persons, 
 types, and conditions ? We could greatly improve 
 history and biography by the more faithful em- 
 ployment of the naturalistic method. Or, if this 
 were dangerous with respect to biographical ac- 
 counts, we might still study real individuals, using 
 fictitious names, or initials like X and Y, the 
 algebraic symbols. Again, are not tables of actual 
 observations, like those of Herbert Spencer's
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. ji 
 
 " Descriptive Sociology," much better for scien- 
 tific purposes ? And if they were extended to 
 English or French society of the appropriate 
 periods, would they not be far preferable to 
 Disraeli and George Eliot or to the " Comedie 
 Humaine"? Would not M. Zola have realized 
 the ends he professes to seek more completely if 
 he had given us his notes upon which he built 
 up " Pot-Bouille " and " La Terre " rather than 
 the books themselves ? We have shown how his 
 " experiment " is nothing but hypothesis. To be 
 truly scientific, should not this all be left out and 
 the exact results of observation be given clearly 
 and concisely ? What need of Buteaus, of Nanas, 
 of Paulines, of Etiennes, to be manufactured 
 with so much trouble, when at the end they are 
 only supposititious and hypothetical characters? 
 Better turn to biography and history and plain 
 realistic portraits of lunatics, monsters, loafers, 
 drunkards, harlots, as they abound in actual life, 
 have them labelled and identified, and put away 
 in some collection, or published with the transac- 
 tions of some sociological society. The members 
 of the Parisian Association for Mutual Autopsy 
 might make themselves useful even before their 
 decease by practising the naturalistic method of 
 analysis upon each other's characters ! 
 
 In Chapter III. I endeavored to show that there 
 is a scientific value to the novel and in what it 
 consists. But it will be seen that this value is a
 
 72 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 substitutive one. We cannot do better, from force 
 of circumstances. Because we have no societies 
 for Mutual Ante-mortem Dissection, and because 
 there are few Rousseaus who are willing to be frank 
 and explicit in their confessions, we cannot exhibit 
 character in its various forms, except under the 
 guise of fiction. Since there are kings, popes, and 
 popular sentiments, we cannot always portray so- 
 cial, political, and religious conditions as facts of 
 science. Moreover, the question of interest comes 
 in. Dry statistics will not be read. An artistic 
 clothing is an immense help in imparting knowl- 
 edge. The romance, therefore, is indeed a vehicle 
 for teaching science ; but never can it become the 
 chief or the best means for inculcating scientific 
 knowledge. To attempt to make it such would 
 result in destroying its aesthetic value, which would 
 in turn take away its value for scientific purposes. 
 If we countenance fiction at all, we do so pri- 
 marily because of its aesthetic value. It is a work 
 of art and it must respect the canons of art. 
 Otherwise it becomes a confused and useless mix- 
 ture, neither one thing nor the other. It is crude 
 or imperfect science and it is poor art. It must 
 appeal to the aesthetic sense, never losing sight of 
 that primal condition of artistic work, the elimi- 
 nation of the disagreeable. It must cater to our 
 appreciation of beauty, harmony, variety in unity, 
 symmetry, proportion, grace, delicacy, congruity. 
 Since it must needs be a product of human con-
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 73 
 
 structiveness, the first aim should be to make it, 
 as such, a good piece of work, not a bad one. 
 
 There is another important consideration which 
 extremists in naturalism are apt to overlook. If 
 we are to follow nature, study the workings of the 
 human mind and its results in all their develop- 
 ments, if we are to pass by none of the passions, 
 impulses, desires, dispositions which issue in 
 human action in such great variety, why should 
 we omit the furor scribendi and its products in 
 creative art ? If a person has a mania for creating 
 Mephistos and Calibans, for describing a Dan- 
 tean Inferno or Paradiso in prose fiction, for giv- 
 ing life in the world of literature to a Franken- 
 stein or a Seraphita beings that never were and, 
 so far as we are able to see, never can be why 
 are not such productions of scientific interest as 
 exhibiting the power of mental forces? If no 
 better, the work itself may be a most valuable in- 
 dication of pathological conditions. It enables us 
 to study the human mind and character just as 
 well, oftentimes more satisfactorily, than if we 
 direct our observation to the relations of conduct 
 between man and man. And as for the writer, 
 how can any one be more realistic than when he is 
 giving free expression to the creative activities of 
 his own mind, showing forth the power and indeed 
 the life of his very soul in the exuberant play of 
 fancy and imagination which artistic liberty always 
 allows and stimulates? M. Zola and his confreres
 
 74 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 do not seem to understand that whatever we may 
 say of the propriety of making the romance " im- 
 personal " as to the author, it never can be done. 
 Why ? Because the romance is a work of art. It 
 is a constructive product of a human mind, a per- 
 sonality which comes before the reader and ap- 
 peals to him as such. This is always an element 
 of the interest, as we noted in Chapter I., and 
 again at the close of Chapter V. The story or 
 romance is a means of communication between 
 human beings. It is something which the author 
 imparts to his readers of his own perception, 
 thought, and feeling. We cannot get rid of this 
 personal element if we try. There remains always 
 at least the interest in the skill, the ingenuity, the 
 cleverness of the contriver, the artificer, the one 
 who conquers difficulties, of which I have several 
 times spoken. M. Zola may pride himself upon 
 his impersonality in the " Rougon-Macquart " 
 novels, but he deceives himself mightily if he 
 thinks the world will not, in addition to other in- 
 terests, look at them, study them, criticise them, 
 as pieces of work turned out by the workman 
 Emile Zola, and as revelations of his own mind 
 and character. We do not like to have the person- 
 ality of the author thrust upon us, but neverthe- 
 less we always take note of it. In the words of 
 M. David-Sauvageot : * " We love to divine, behind 
 
 * " Le Realisme et le Naturalisme," etc.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 75 
 
 the veil of dramatic fiction, a distinct personality 
 which makes effort neither to disclose nor conceal 
 itself." There is a great deal of force, too, in the 
 following remarks of Veron,* though they must 
 not be taken too universally and absolutely: "The 
 degree of reality which a work of art exhibits is 
 of aesthetic importance only because it enables us 
 to measure the power of penetration necessary to 
 seize it, and the force of imagination which has 
 permitted its reproduction with that distinctness 
 which we admire." Again : " When we follow the 
 development of the characters of Tartuffe, of 
 Avare, of Cousine Bette, of Marneffe, that which 
 interests us, aesthetically speaking, ... is the 
 profundity of observation, thanks to which Mo- 
 liere and Balzac have been able to penetrate to the 
 heart of their characters ; and, above all, the power 
 of depiction by which they are able to make them 
 come forth into the light of the stage or the ro- 
 mance, and make of them living beings. That 
 which we admire in the characters is not them- 
 selves, it is the genius which has created them." 
 
 Although there are some minor points which 
 might be made in addition, we are now in a posi- 
 tion to see clearly, I think, that if we attempt to 
 make " realism " or " naturalism " a shibboleth of 
 fiction-composition, we shall be in danger of sui- 
 cidally perverting a true and useful method when 
 
 * " L'Esthetique," Part I., ch. vi.
 
 76 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 properly applied, so far as to greatly and unwar- 
 rantably limit the sphere of romantic and creative 
 literature, to restrict it unduly within that sphere, 
 and even to threaten its entire extinction. This 
 perversion has gone far already ; and it is well to 
 call a halt in the march of naturalistic ideas in the 
 world of art, not for the purpose of going back to 
 the old romanticism, but with the view of deter- 
 mining our position, seeing the end from the begin- 
 ning, and ascertaining whither our progress tends. 
 After this long discussion, then, let us get before 
 our minds succinctly, by way of summary, the uses 
 and limitations of the naturalistic method. If it 
 be regarded as a mode of discipline and prepara- 
 tion, it is absolutely indispensable. No one can 
 be a truly great artist in anything who is not able 
 to reproduce nature as she is. For if the reader 
 will pardon reiteration our material for construc- 
 tion is nothing else but what our experiences of 
 nature give us. If we desire to create we can only 
 rearrange and rehabilitate. In order to execute, 
 to do anything, we must know. Let us remember 
 what Ruskin says in " Modern Painters " : * "All 
 qualities of execution, properly so called, are in- 
 fluenced by, and in a great degree dependent on, 
 a far higher power than that of mere execution 
 knowledge of truth. For exactly in proportion as 
 an artist is certain of his end, will he be swift and 
 
 *Part I., sec. ii., ch. ii.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 77 
 
 simple in his means ; and as he is accurate and 
 deep in his knowledge will he be refined and pre- 
 cise in his touch. The first merit of manipulation, 
 then, is that delicate and ceaseless expression 
 of refined truth which is carried out to the last 
 touch, and shadow of a touch, and which makes 
 every hair's breadth of importance, and every gra- 
 dation full of meaning." Therefore, it is of the 
 utmost importance for the sake of expression 
 both that the author have something to express 
 and know that something. Storing his mind with 
 material, if he comprehends through and through 
 that which he has observed, he so much the more 
 increases his power to utilize successfully what- 
 ever he has gathered. 
 
 Furthermore, as we also learned, completeness 
 and thoroughness of observation is a powerful aid 
 to the development of the creative powers. The 
 imagination is thereby stimulated, strengthened, 
 and trained. By following nature, we at last be- 
 come nature's master. Again, to apply the words 
 of Ruskin these for the admonition of young art- 
 ists : " They should keep to quiet colors, grays 
 and browns ; and . . . should go to nature in 
 all singleness of heart, and walk with her labori- 
 ously and trustingly, having no other thoughts 
 but how to penetrate her meaning, and remem- 
 ber her instruction, rejecting nothing, . . . 
 scorning nothing. . . . Then, when their mem- 
 ories are stored and their imaginations fed,
 
 78 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 and their hands firm, let them take up the scar- 
 let and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, 
 and show us what their heads are make of. 
 We will follow them wherever they choose to 
 lead ; we will check at nothing ; they are then our 
 masters, and are fit to be so." 
 
 These last precepts show forth the heritage of 
 the true artist. They admonish us not to sacrifice 
 our birthright for a mess of pottage. They tell us 
 that the " experimental method " is a means, not 
 an end. We must not make the mistake of sup- 
 posing that the study of nature consists only in 
 an enumeration of nature's phenomena. Nor can 
 we impose upon the world by giving it our 
 sketches and studies as the finale of art. The 
 use of " observation and experiment " is to enable 
 us the better to employ our faculties. In that 
 employment we may introduce new beings into 
 nature, we may exaggerate nature, we may even 
 transcend nature, as Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, 
 and Balzac did. By following her we have simply 
 trained our selective and constructive powers to 
 enter into the vast unknown, and call forth its 
 spirits by our words of command. 
 
 Hence " naturalism " never must be allowed to 
 limit our creative activity, but only minister unto 
 it, chastening it to enable us to give substance 
 rather than shadow. Tt must not chain genius 
 down. It must not restrict its selection of sub- 
 jects, nor must it absolutely control its treatment
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 
 
 79 
 
 of them. It may lay the foundation, furnish the 
 brick and stone and the mortar, but not the archi- 
 tecture of the building. The ideal must super- 
 vene and supply the guiding hand, the scheme, the 
 form. In Bulwer's words,* " Art, from all forms of 
 the positive is ever seeking to extract the ideal." 
 " The base of art is in the study' of nature ; not to 
 imitate, but first to select and then to combine 
 from nature those materials into which the artist 
 can breathe his own vivifying idea." Says Goethe 
 in " Wilhelm Meister," of the true artists : " Paus- 
 ing at some standpoint of ideal perception, they let 
 the variety of life pass under their eyes, and trans- 
 late its meanings into the new language of their 
 genius." Let us listen also to Mr. Robert Louis 
 Stevenson : f " The whole secret is, that no art 
 does compete with life." " Let the writer choose 
 a motive, whether of character or -passion, . . . 
 and allow neither himself nor any character in the 
 course of the dialogue to utter one sentence that 
 is not part and parcel of the business of the story, 
 or the discussion of the problem involved." " And 
 as the root of the whole matter, let him bear in 
 mind that his novel is not a transcript of life to 
 be judged by its exactitude, but a simplification of 
 some side or point of life, to stand or fall by its 
 significant simplicity." 
 
 M. David-Sauvageot, in the work before quoted 
 
 * ' ' Caxtoniana. " f Longman's Magazine.
 
 80 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 from,* has, to my mind, indicated the important 
 service performed by contemporary realism. He 
 esteems its great value to lie in the reaction which 
 it has inaugurated against the arbitrary conven- 
 tions of degenerate classic and of romantic art. In 
 this he is, no doubt, quite right. It has the value 
 of a protestation, a reformation. The conventions 
 against which it is a reaction were, as he says, fash- 
 ions controlled by the times and surviving simply 
 because they were fashions, after their producing 
 causes had ceased to act. The world, to the reader 
 of former days, was only the " milieu " of princes 
 and grand seigneurs, of warriors, of demi-gods, of 
 palaces and castles, of personal combats, of Ho- 
 meric and feudalistic deeds. These conventions 
 were imposed by the exigencies of public opinion, 
 by neglect of the constant evolution going on in 
 nature, thereby giving too great a rigidity to art ; 
 by a disposition to impose the processes of one 
 particular art upon all, and to separate utterly 
 art from nature, according to Goethe's principle as 
 De Quincey declares it : " Art is art, because it is 
 not nature." Against these hard-and-fast princi- 
 ples of artistic production a powerful protest was 
 necessary. This has certainly been delivered by 
 the naturalistic writers, and very efficaciously. It 
 is in truth a manifestation of the aesthetic impulse 
 demanding freedom for itself ; and in obtaining 
 
 * " Le Realisme et le Naturalisme," etc.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 8 1 
 
 this it made possible and actual a better art ; for 
 " It is only in the conditions of an absolute free- 
 dom that any real art can be done."* Let the lib- 
 erators then be careful lest they impose upon us a 
 new tyranny, whose trammels will make necessary 
 a counter-movement in the interest of artistic lib- 
 erty and progress. 
 
 Indeed, M. David-Sauvageot thinks that realism 
 has only prepared the way for a new and domi- 
 nating idealism. He quotes Fustel de Coulanges 
 to the effect that " there is need of volumes of 
 analysis to give, a line of synthesis." As, from 
 1600 to 1636, French literature abounded in a fer- 
 tile confusion of essays and researches, out of 
 whose condensation came the Cid, so may we an- 
 ticipate that the realism of Flaubert and of M. 
 Zola will ultimate in " an idealism less profound 
 perhaps, but more free and more comprehensive 
 than that of a Moliere and a Racine." 
 
 Upon the whole, then, we are forced to the con- 
 clusion that realism could not, if it would, dis- 
 pense with creativeness, save by abolishing art in 
 reducing it to science ; but that, if rightly under- 
 stood, it is of great value in making strong, clear, 
 and life-like the products of creation. Further- 
 more, while it is at the foundation of all reproduc- 
 tive art, its methods will not even there supersede 
 the necessity of employing a selective process which 
 
 * Ouida : North American Review. 
 6
 
 82 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 is determined by ideals. In all the recent discus- 
 sions the true relations of realism and idealism to 
 each other have not been better expressed than 
 they were by Frances Power Cobbe * twenty-five 
 years ago, in estimating the elements of value in 
 creative and reproductive art respectively. She 
 says : " The value of creative art is determined by 
 two conditions: first, by the extent and fulness 
 with which the artist has received the divine reve- 
 lation of beauty in nature ; secondly, by the faith- 
 fulness with which he has recorded what he has 
 received. The value of reproductive art is deter- 
 mined by the intrinsic excellence of the work he 
 chooses to reproduce ; secondly, by the extent to 
 which he has reproduced in fresh form and not 
 merely copied the work in question; thirdly, by 
 the perfection of his own achievement as itself a 
 work of art, judged independently from the origi- 
 nal." 
 
 Since we discover, therefore, that realism only 
 endows us with a method to be used under the 
 guidance of ideals formed by the synthetic and 
 selective activities of the mind, we have still to 
 search for a principle of selection. We are thus 
 thrown back upon the question of interest and the 
 interaction of scientific, moral, and aesthetic mo- 
 tives. We can then understand the meaning of 
 the two passages quoted at the very beginning of 
 
 *" The Hierarchy of Art," 1865.
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM. 3 
 
 this chapter, which are not comprehensible on the 
 theory that the ends of art are satisfied by observ- 
 ing and presenting everything and anything that 
 appears in nature. In that case whatever is por- 
 trayed should appear equally realistic to every- 
 body, if it be a faithful copy. But the reader as 
 well as the writer selects, out of natural phenom- 
 ena, objects which assimilate with his own charac- 
 ter and life. He thus to a degree makes his own 
 world, and that artist appears realistic to him who 
 exhibits his own "illusion." Hence the explana- 
 tion of the strange contrarieties in criticisms of 
 artistic work, one praising and another condemn- 
 ing; one believing the production fanciful, another 
 esteeming it remarkably true to life. It is evi- 
 dent, then, that we must consider further, and in 
 greater detail, the various objects of interest and 
 causes of interest which give popularity and suc- 
 cess to the story that brings them before the 
 mind. This we shall proceed to do in the suc- 
 ceeding chapters.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EXHIBITION OF POWER. 
 
 A MANIFESTATION of great power in nature 
 always arrests attention, whether it be simple 
 force or that to which a moral quality, beneficent 
 or maleficent, attaches. This is true not only in 
 that sense of the word which implies passive 
 superiority, but also in the signification of energy 
 and activity. Again, the effect is produced both 
 by brute, massive strength and by cunning, subtle 
 skill. Whatever shows great material, vital, pas- 
 sional, or intellectual force commands attention. 
 
 Experience is made up of a succession of actions 
 and reactions. The thousand-and-one movements 
 in the world about us, of air, of light, of gravity, 
 of animals, of human beings in the ordinary course 
 of their avocations, however, do not and cannot 
 all impress themselves upon us. The most of 
 them are not noticed at all. There must be some- 
 thing extraordinary, outside of the common flow 
 of phenomena, to occupy our thought or divert it. 
 Novelty itself will seize the attention, but the 
 continuance of the impression is conditioned by 
 the quantity of the sensation, which itself depends
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 85 
 
 upon the stimulus already acting, or other coinci- 
 dent attractions. 
 
 Accounts of great convulsions of nature will, 
 therefore, interest a reader if they are so given 
 as to awaken to some degree the same emotions 
 that the spectator would have were he present at 
 the actual occurrence. These feelings must be 
 very much weaker, and in consequence of that 
 weakness other emotions come into play which 
 would not have appeared in the original expe- 
 rience. No doubt a simple description of the 
 destruction of Pompeii, if well done, would hold 
 the reader, even if the relations that ruin bore 
 to individual characters did not appear. Histor- 
 ical accounts of this sort are always interesting. 
 When, therefore, an interest in human beings, as 
 affected by the natural disturbance, is superadded, 
 as in Bulwer's " Last Days," a powerful impres- 
 sion is produced. It may be well to analyze a 
 little the interest thus experienced with the view 
 of ascertaining the generic effects of the exhibi- 
 tion of power in nature. 
 
 In Bulwer's novel, just mentioned, the over- 
 whelming of the city is the culmination, there 
 being after it only a postscript chapter, " wherein 
 all things cease " especially the story. The 
 ancient city is reconstructed and described, to- 
 gether with the manners and customs of the in- 
 habitants ; a little world of characters is created 
 whose fortunes are to be followed, and in whom
 
 86 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 an interest is aroused quite independently of the 
 denouement. They might have been disposed of 
 without ruining the whole place, and still we 
 should have been tolerably well satisfied. When, 
 however, the catastrophe arrives, how are we af- 
 fected ? In such manner as if we were there, had 
 partly seen what happened and some one had 
 told us the rest. The picture of the city and the 
 volcano is in our minds and thoughts of the 
 people whom we knew. 
 
 In the first place, fear controls the situation. 
 Our senses are affected by the tremendous phe- 
 nomena, the lurid light, the frightful noise, the 
 choking odors, the incessant activity, the violent 
 disintegration and destruction going on. These 
 things paralyze us for the moment, at least, and 
 we are thrown into a receptive state in which 
 our own activities are abated. If, now, we were 
 actually on the spot this inaction would soon be 
 succeeded by thoughts of escape, plans and move- 
 ments to that end. But when once in a position 
 of safety, we gaze upon the eruption and witness 
 its effects, the emotions of fear subside and are 
 superseded by others of a different character. In 
 place of a depression of vitality there comes an 
 exaltation of it. We describe our feelings by 
 the terms Sense of Grandeur, of Sublimity. We 
 ally ourselves with a producing cause of what we 
 see, think of ourselves as putting forth strength 
 and also performing great results. We enter
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. g/ 
 
 sympathetically into the succession of phenom- 
 ena. We are lifted up into the region of a greater 
 power and are filled with the buoyancy of an ex- 
 alted life. Impressed at first by fear, our minds 
 are afterward pervaded by an accretion of potent 
 vitality which dominates, reduces, and casts out 
 fear. The emotions thus arising are truly aesthetic. 
 We do not suffer pain either physically or sympa- 
 thetically. Pain is eliminated, and what the mind 
 dwells upon are movements which develop feel- 
 ings the reverse of disagreeable. If associations 
 do bring up painful thoughts they are suspended 
 by just the same process as before, and their 
 irruption only serves to enhance the resultant 
 pleasure. 
 
 A similar effect is produced by the more ordi- 
 nary operation of natural forces. The lightning, 
 the wind, the waves are often sublime. In many 
 of these cases the fresh tonic air, invigorating and 
 stimulating, directly inspires the feeling of strength. 
 The sunlight, too, is in the most marked degree 
 the cause of sensations of increased vitality. All 
 the various movements of the air, the earth, the 
 waters, awaken emotions of power in the beholder. 
 In realistic description this pleasure is reproduced 
 in the reader. It is precisely because of such an 
 emotional stimulus that we enjoy passages like 
 the following in the first chapter of Mr. William 
 Black's " Princess of Thule" : " From out of the low- 
 ering southwest fierce gusts of wind were driving
 
 gg PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 up volumes and flying rags of clouds, and sweep- 
 ing onward, at the same time, the gathering waves 
 that fell hissing and thundering on the shore." 
 Or those of which here is a sample from " Wanda," 
 by Ouida: "There is such abundance of rushing 
 water, of deep grass, of endless shade, of forest 
 trees, of heather and pine, of torrent and tarn ; 
 . . . and the earth seems so green and fresh, 
 and silent and strong'' * 
 
 In the contemplation of mountains we have 
 power impressed upon us also. Ruskin remarks, 
 in " Modern Painters " : f " Mountains are to the 
 rest of the body of the earth what violent muscu- 
 lar action is to the body of man. The muscles 
 and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, 
 brought out with fierce and convulsive energy, 
 full of expression, passion, and strength. . . . 
 The fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and 
 exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting like hair 
 from their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan 
 hands to heaven, saying, ' I live for ever.' ' This 
 Is no meaningless rhetoric. It expresses most 
 profound truth, and is an explanation of a primary 
 influence nature has over us. We seek life con- 
 servation, development of vital power and wher- 
 ever there is manifested power in nature we sym- 
 pathize with it, we seek to drink of it, assimilate 
 it, and feel it coursing in our veins. We even 
 
 * Italics mine. } Part II., sec. iv., ch. I.
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 
 
 8 9 
 
 personify, and it seems to bring us near to a source 
 of all power, from which we can renew our flag- 
 ging energies. " The voice of thy thunder was in 
 the heaven ; the lightning lightened the world ; 
 the earth trembled and shook. Thy way is in the 
 sea and thy path in the great waters." " I will 
 lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh 
 my help" 
 
 But it is quite certain, as Mr. Walter Besant 
 says,* that " the very first rule in fiction is that 
 the human interest must absolutely absorb every- 
 thing else ; " and if power manifested in nature 
 inanimate arouses an aesthetic emotion through 
 sympathy, how inevitable that it should do so 
 when displayed by human beings, with whom a 
 personal sympathy is possible ! The ideal of the 
 perfection of one's own self, physically and men- 
 tally, which every one has, seems then to be real- 
 ized, and our minds are filled with admiring joy 
 as we behold. Who, in reading Homer's " Hymn 
 to Apollo," for example, is not permeated with a 
 consciousness of ' exhaustless strength lifting him 
 up and making him feel as if he were breathing in 
 the breath of eternal life ? Thus the hero comes 
 to be an object of primary interest in human so- 
 ciety, and consequently in fictitious representa- 
 tions of it. 
 
 Power can be exhibited in many ways, and this 
 
 * " Art of Fiction."
 
 90 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 very sympathy, which is necessary to our interest 
 in its manifestations, has an important moderating 
 and regulating effect upon our appreciation. Peo- 
 ple in every age mark out channels in which effort 
 can be put forth, and beyond which it is useless. 
 They form their ends according to existing condi- 
 tions. A man is great who is strong in those par- 
 ticulars in which strength is needed. An Achilles 
 in a modern community would be rated about on 
 a par with a prize-fighter. Ulysses also would 
 serve very well in that capacity. On the other 
 hand, Lord Beaconsfield or Metternich would not 
 have been eminent in Athenian society. The en- 
 vironment, the state of civilization, the limitations 
 of activity by circumstances, determine the form 
 in which greatness must appear, if at all. 
 
 The romancer, however, can construct a tale 
 which exemplifies the heroism of an age long 
 past ; and if he be skilful in portraying the appro- 
 priate " milieu" his story will be read. It will be 
 praised because it is well done, and also because 
 of the general fact that great deeds and qualities 
 are intrinsically interesting ; but his circle of read- 
 ers will be a somewhat limited one, and he will 
 find critics complaining that his romance is dull 
 and artificial. Then it is rarely the case that an 
 author, imbued with the ideas and incidents of 
 one generation, can reproduce satisfactorily to 
 himself or anybody else the manners and deeds of 
 a by-gone time. Nor will he be moved to try,
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. gi 
 
 save in exceptional instances. Hence, the fashion 
 of the fictitious literature of any period is set by 
 the conditions of thought and life in that period, 
 and the best work is done according to that 
 fashion. 
 
 Human power has been shown in history very 
 largely in conflict between men. Although its 
 methods have totally changed, war has not ceased 
 to absorb people's thoughts and excite their feel- 
 ings. In the shock of battle power is shown in 
 two principal ways the one in triumph and vic- 
 tory, the other in resistance and endurance. Both 
 of these command admiration. The crushing of 
 an adversary elicits our plaudits for the con- 
 queror, while we cannot withhold our favor from 
 him who has made an obstinate fight, but at last 
 is forced to succumb. Yet our sympathies will 
 always be with one of the combatants rather than 
 with the other, and the elation at the success of 
 the one we support causes us to forget or to dwell 
 little upon the valor of the defeated. There are 
 two series of impressions made upon him who is 
 the witness of actual warfare. He is filled with 
 satisfaction at the success of his cause, or his own 
 deeds in the face of great dangers and trials, and 
 he is horrified and sickened at the carnage, the 
 suffering, the devastation. Which of these will 
 be in the ascendant will depend upon his own 
 make-up. In order to be a good soldier, however, 
 there must be a callousness to suffering, a weak-
 
 9 2 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ness of sympathy, which makes him glory in vic- 
 tory and mind little about the distressful side of 
 warfare. In addition, there is very often, as re- 
 marked in our first chapter, a positive thirst for 
 blood, which makes men delight in the sufferings 
 of others, and even to take pleasure in inflicting 
 pain. This ferocity of the wild beast has by no 
 means been extinguished in human nature. 
 
 Now, the novelist in describing a battle may 
 systematically lead the reader's mind along such a 
 course as to fasten the attention upon the move- 
 ments of success and failure, of victory and defeat, 
 upon the heroic deeds ultimating in triumph, ex- 
 citing all the enthusiasm called forth by the dis- 
 play of power in action, without allowing any 
 reflection upon the butchery, the woe, the horror 
 of the conflict. Walter Scott's tournaments, as in 
 " Ivanhoe," furnish good samples of this for single 
 combats, and Mr. Rider Haggard, in his South 
 African adventures, for battles between armies. 
 Such descriptions would not be called " realistic." 
 But they comply with one of the chief canons of 
 aesthetic pleasure, namely, that the disagreeable 
 be eliminated. The majority of readers do not 
 want to have the carnage vividly represented. 
 They want the effects of rapid, brilliant, startling 
 movement, the imposing charge, the overthrow of 
 squadrons, the music of bands, and the hurrahs of 
 victory. If they are told that men are mowed 
 down like grass before the scythe, the thought
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 
 
 93 
 
 exhilarates them as a natural step in the progress 
 to the event, inasmuch as they do not realize in 
 their feelings that anybody is hurt in the operation 
 of mowing. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the writer chooses to be 
 " realistic " that is, realistic on the other side of 
 the picture and gives full account of the horrible 
 wounds, the shrieks of agony, the smell of blood, 
 the brutal onslaughts, the presence of death and 
 despair, his narrative may interest, but from an 
 entirely different principle. The interest is no 
 longer from an exhibition of power. It may be 
 that of the moralist, of which we shall speak by 
 and by. Or it may be delight in blood and cruelty 
 which demonstrates the tiger in human nature. 
 The soldier of whom we just spoke, who is merely 
 callous, will not be pleased by such a recital. 
 Those are the things he seeks to overlook as well 
 in actual battle as in the description. It is the 
 one who pants " for the dreadful privilege to 
 kill " * who takes pleasure in such particulars. 
 They arouse, and to some extent gratify, the pred- 
 atory lust. " Even in the midst of compassion," 
 observes Montaigne, f " we feel within I know 
 not what tart-sweet titillation of malicious pleas- 
 ure in seeing others suffer ; children even have the 
 same feeling." This introduces us to the whole 
 subject of representation of the brutal and cruel, 
 
 * Horace, Sat. X., 96. f " Essais," III., c. i.
 
 94 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 which belongs rather to the category of suffering 
 than of power. It is well for us, however, to note 
 here the fact that connected with the exercise of 
 destructive power there is an original pleasure, 
 which is distinctively that of the carnivorous 
 animal in killing its prey. It is shown in Bill 
 Sykes of Dickens, in many of the characters and 
 incidents of Roderick Random and Peregrine 
 Pickle, and the novels of that period ; in Mr. Rider 
 Haggard's Umslopogaas, in Mr. Stevenson's Hyde, 
 and also in some of the scenes of Tolstoi's " War 
 and Peace." 
 
 From this element of bloodthirstiness exhibi, 
 tions of constructive power are free, though the 
 same fatal effects may follow from disregard of 
 the pain of others, as in cases of an overweening 
 and selfish ambition. But in these instances the 
 sympathy arises from the greatness of accomplish- 
 ment, the attainment of magnificent ends, the sur- 
 passing of serious obstacles, the triumph over 
 difficulties. Hence our interest in the founders of 
 empires, the liberators of peoples, the self-made 
 men, the inventors, the great philanthropists. For 
 the last-named, however, admiration does not 
 spring wholly from sympathy with the achieve- 
 ments as such, but from their beneficent character, 
 their social value, their utility. Yet this altruistic 
 regard is never essential to the interest. The 
 development of a selfishness, able in securing its 
 own ends, is just as sure to hold the attention,
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 95 
 
 because it exhibits capacity and superiority. 
 Becky Sharp* is certainly one of the characters 
 of fiction that will endure, and it is not virtuous 
 self-abnegation that appears as the prominent 
 feature of her career. Again, the successful spoli- 
 ation of Cousin Ponsf strikes us as exceedingly 
 clever, and we even detect ourselves entering 
 into the plot with the conspirators and suggest- 
 ing how we would do the thing if we were the 
 actors. This is simply the interest in skilful 
 activity, in contrivance, inventiveness, which ob- 
 tains whether the end be diabolical or divine. 
 
 We shall not consider in this place how this last 
 interest is nullified or counteracted, further than 
 to say that it is by moral feeling. But even if 
 our disapproval is strong, the story will occupy 
 our mind if it be artistically told, with the un- 
 pleasant side of the events well-concealed or mini- 
 fied. When, however, the plan of the tale is to 
 overwhelm, crush, or punish this able wickedness 
 by a vis major of retributive justice, it may be 
 important to the effect to set forth saliently and 
 in detail the enormity of the villany, in order to 
 make the triumph of the good seem greater. 
 
 As connected with the exhibition of skill and 
 clever control of means for given ends, we must 
 not lose sight of the fact that the impression of 
 power left upon the reader often is very largely 
 
 * Thackeray. \ Balzac.
 
 96 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 that of the creative genius of the author. We 
 wonder how one small head could possibly have 
 contained all the knowledge spun out in chapter 
 after chapter of scenes and incidents involving a 
 multitude of characters. Without this admiration 
 I do not believe a reading public ever would have 
 endured such interminable and tedious produc- 
 tions as Eugene Sue's " Wandering Jew " and 
 Victor Hugo's " Les Miserables." We are amazed 
 at the magnitude of the work, at the intricacy of 
 the plot, at the skilful handling of such a large 
 section of human experience, and, as in the case 
 of the " Wandering Jew," at the range of space 
 involved. We say to ourselves that the author 
 must be a giant in intellect, and we read on and 
 on, spite of our weariness, to find out what new 
 and remarkable circumstance he will give us next. 
 This same interest in the author obtains, as has 
 been remarked, to some extent in every work. 
 His brightness, his cleverness, his constructive 
 power, his faithfulness in reproducing all influ- 
 ence our feelings ; the story first, to be sure, but 
 then, reflectively, the author's genius. 
 
 Another form of the impression of power is 
 associated with those effects of the sublime men- 
 tioned in the first part of the chapter. I refer to 
 the supernatural, as personality. This is con- 
 cerned, of course, with the religious sentiments, 
 the basis of which is fear. But this fear gives 
 place to a pleasurable sense of dependence, trust,
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 
 
 97 
 
 and faith, whenever we feel that by propitiation 
 we have won the favor of Deity. We thus enter 
 into relations of sympathy with supernatural 
 beings at the same time that we are exalted by 
 their power and majesty. It is the contentment 
 of the child, who feels safe from danger in the 
 protecting care of a parent's greater power. 
 Moreover, fear, though an intrinsically painful 
 emotion, does fix the attention upon the object 
 causing it. Anything, therefore, from which pain 
 is apprehended is necessarily interesting. Fear is 
 not the acute pain of a hurt, but a massive oppres- 
 sion, which first stimulates to find a way of escape 
 from the threatening peril, and then, if none be 
 found, abates all the energies. But in the sym- 
 pathetic fear which the reader experiences in the 
 narration of dangers menacing the characters of a 
 story, the ultimate effects of the emotion are not 
 felt because, ordinarily, it cannot be made suffi- 
 ciently strong. The effect of arresting and hold- 
 ing the attention is accomplished, but unless the 
 fear-inspiring situation is held before the mind too 
 long, the reader gets the stimulation without the 
 depression. An exception which proves the rule 
 is, that people of weak nerves, or those who are 
 ill, frequently are unable to bear ghost stories, 
 because the actual terror aroused is so great that 
 they must get rid of it by discontinuing the read- 
 ing and turning the mind to something else. With 
 the most of people, however, the feeling evoked by 
 7
 
 98 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 such tales is that which is indicated by the phrase 
 " creepy-crawly," which is an emotion of fear strong 
 enough, but not too strong, to fix the attention. 
 Thus, the depiction of power which creates fear 
 is an important element of interest in the story, 
 provided there be not too great intensity or long 
 continuance of the effect. 
 
 Such novels as Bulwer's " Zanoni " deal out 
 about the proper modicum of the supernatural, the 
 mysterious, the fear-inspiring ; while Foe's stories 
 administer an overdose. In " Zanoni " there is a 
 human and a supernatural interest, and the being 
 through whom the latter is excited is an excellent 
 and admirable character on the whole. The sug- 
 gestions which stir up fear are relieved by others 
 of a cheerful and enlivening character. Foe, on 
 the other hand, piles horrors upon us without 
 stint or alleviation, until we begin to revert to the 
 author and think him a maniac. He overdoes the. 
 matter. It is the fault of most writers who make 
 a specialty of supernatural stories and tales of 
 terror. In Beckford's "Vathek," however, the 
 equilibrium is admirably preserved, but who, now- 
 adays, would admire Walpole's " Castle of Otran- 
 to," or Anne Radcliffe's " Mysteries of Udolpho " ? 
 Where horror is accumulated without relief, one 
 of two things happens. Either the reader is so 
 painfully shocked that he throws the book down, 
 or the monotony of the terrible disgusts him and 
 he abandons it for that cause.
 
 EXHIBITION OF POWER. 
 
 99 
 
 Allied with this fascination of the supernatural, 
 the fearful, and grewsome is the curiosity excited 
 by mysterious and abnormal natural phenomena. 
 These are available to the novelist for like reasons. 
 There is also, no doubt, a scientific impulse toward 
 inquiry aroused in the reader. The series of tales 
 by Dr. William A. Hammond and the Marquise 
 Clara Lanza, entitled " Tales of Eccentric Life," 
 well illustrate the charm of this kind of fiction ; 
 as also does, and most admirably, the more im- 
 portant work of Madame Lanza, " Mr. Perkins's 
 Daughter," wherein the story turns upon the very 
 curious and dramatic circumstance of a " double 
 consciousness " of the heroine. 
 
 The use made of the supernatural for ideal cre- 
 ations of the beautiful and the good angelic and 
 seraphic beings with celestial surroundings pre- 
 sents power unalloyed by associations of pain and 
 destruction. Hence the popularity of fairy stories. 
 If well constructed, they fulfil very perfectly the 
 conditions of creative art. The difficulty with 
 them is the lack of human interest, which, after 
 all, is necessary to most people for the enjoyment 
 of a work of fiction. 
 
 In the general survey now made of the effects of 
 the exhibition of power, we discover that we have 
 reached one generic cause of interest in a romance. 
 It is such because it is an object of engrossing 
 interest in actual experience. Power, as physical 
 force, as mechanism, as skill, as constructive, as
 
 100 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 destructive, as comprehended or as mysterious, as 
 natural or as supernatural impresses itself always 
 upon the mind. The course of man's life is one 
 of exertion, of effort, of achievement. Strength 
 means life, growth, development, conservation. In 
 Chapter II. we made a synthesis of pleasures, 
 showing how they all relate to the three functions 
 of growth, preservation, and reproduction. The 
 ends we have been considering in the present 
 chapter are typically the ends of egoistic develop- 
 ment and expansion the enlargement of the in- 
 dividual self. Hence, whatever shows power or 
 strength, whether in exercise or held in reserve, 
 always must be a primary object of sympathetic 
 human interest.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 
 
 IF one of the chief conditions of aesthetic effect 
 be the rejection or abolition of the disagreeable 
 and painful, the interest felt in the portrayal of 
 suffering would seem to be anomalous ; for that 
 such interest exists is undeniable. It proceeds 
 from a variety of sources. We will first consider 
 suffering uncomplicated by moral feelings on the 
 part of the patient, as we find it in sickness, pov- 
 erty, or misfortune, not associated with guilt or 
 misdemeanor. 
 
 Our interest in our fellow human beings pro- 
 ceeds from the gregarious nature of man. An 
 individual cannot attain his own ends of develop- 
 ment and perfection, nor gratify his own wants 
 completely, without the use of and aid furnished 
 by others of his own kind. The only way in which 
 he can obtain this assistance at all perfectly is 
 when it is accorded voluntarily. The sole method 
 of creating in another a voluntary disposition to 
 help is to entertain and show a reciprocal willing- 
 ness to subserve the wishes and ends of that other. 
 Hence, the natural appetite for society, and the
 
 IO2 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 birth of sympathy. The interests of a peaceful 
 association of sentient beings cannot be secured 
 without a capacity to enter into the feelings of 
 others, and make them in some degree one's own. 
 The peculiarity of the sympathetic emotions is 
 the attaching of certain feelings relating primarily 
 to ourselves to another personality, and having 
 those feelings aroused by the circumstances of an- 
 other person or being. These emotions are de- 
 veloped very powerfully through the sexual and 
 family relations. They are also extended to man 
 as man, and even to animals, in the growth of the 
 altruistic character. Selfishness and self-absorb- 
 ing ends diminish their force.* 
 
 There is no novelist who is more successful in 
 the representation of suffering so as to excite 
 sympathy than is Dickens. As M. Taine says :f 
 "There is no writer who knows better how to 
 touch and melt ; he makes us weep, absolutely 
 shed tears ; before reading him, we did not know 
 there was so much pity in the heart. The grief of 
 a child who wishes to be loved by his father, and 
 whom his father does not love ; the despairing 
 love and slow death of a poor, half-imbecile young 
 man all these pictures of secret grief leave an in- 
 effaceable impression. The tears which he sheds 
 are genuine, and compassion is their only source." 
 
 * " System of Psychology," Part VI., ch. xlv. 
 f " English Literature," Book V., ch. i.
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 
 
 103 
 
 Probably his most characteristic portrayals are 
 those of the miseries of children in ill conditions. 
 We at once think of Little Nell, Little Jo, and 
 David Copperfield as types of this class of suffer- 
 ers. It is easy to see in such cases that the pa- 
 rental feelings are the foundation of the pity and 
 sorrow we feel at the hard and distressful fate of 
 these characters. This grief we should not ex- 
 perience, were it not that the author first creates a 
 very lovable personality, in whom our interest in- 
 creases, and with whom we are more and more 
 disposed to sympathize. A volume of tender 
 emotion is generated, which is in itself agreeable. 
 This produces a greater sensitiveness to events 
 which supposably affect painfully the person 
 toward whom the tender feelings flow. But when 
 such incidents occur, it is a mistake to suppose 
 that the sympathetic emotions springing up are 
 unadulterated pain. On the contrary, they are 
 largely pleasurable. There is the tender feeling, 
 admiration for the character, the skilful weaving 
 of the plot, the beauty of description, the rising 
 desire to relieve the suffering. Even when we are 
 moved to tears, their flow is a relief and an as- 
 suagement, succeeded by a calm and the pleasure 
 of repose. 
 
 In contemplating the approach of death there 
 are other emotions. We are in the presence of 
 the great Mystery of Power. The sublime, the 
 supernatural overshadow us, and with our human
 
 104 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 sympathies go along an awe at the power which 
 controls life and transcends knowledge, and also a 
 yearning faith that prompts us to lift up 
 
 " A voice as unto Him that hears, 
 A cry above the conquered years, 
 To one that with us works.'* 
 
 The religious aspirations, sympathies, and joys are 
 aroused in the solemn passing of one whom we 
 have learned to love. Sorrow there is, but there 
 is also peace and hope, and often trust. Deep 
 feeling, indeed, fills us when we read the following 
 passage from " The Old Curiosity Shop," but that 
 feeling is not pain. We do not seek to rid our- 
 selves of it ; we rather cherish it. " They saw the 
 vault covered and the stone fixed down. Then, 
 when the dusk of evening had come on, and not 
 a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place, 
 when the bright moon poured in her light on 
 tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, 
 and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet 
 grave in that calm time, when outward things 
 and inward thoughts teem with assurances of im- 
 mortality, and worldly hopes and fears are hum- 
 bled in the dust before them then, with tranquil 
 and submissive hearts they turned away, and left 
 the child with God. 
 
 " Oh ! it is hard to take to heart the lesson that 
 such deaths will teach ; but let no man reject it, 
 for it is one all must learn, and is a mighty, uni-
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 
 
 105 
 
 versal truth. When death strikes down the in- 
 nocent and young, for every fragile form from 
 which he lets the panting spirit free a hundred 
 virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, 
 to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear 
 that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves 
 some good is born, some gentler nature comes. 
 In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright 
 creations that defy his power, and his dark path 
 becomes a way of light to heaven." 
 
 In reading the description of the sickness and 
 death of " Ivan Ilyitch," by Tolstoi, the sources 
 of our interest are somewhat different. We do not 
 care much for Ivan, still less for his family, or any- 
 body else introduced into the story. We have no 
 tenderness such as we feel for Little Nell or Little 
 Jo. Nor is there anything beautiful connected 
 with Ivan's life, nor any compensating thought or 
 imagination suggested by his death. We are held 
 by a scientific interest in the development of the 
 man's disease and his own attitude toward it. 
 We follow Ivan's analyses and speculations, we 
 occupy ourselves with his symptoms, his depres- 
 sions, his frights, his despair. It is a medical, a 
 pathological interest. But this is not all. We are 
 fascinated by the horror of the situation. We 
 cannot get away if we try. I have no doubt this 
 is the explanation of a great deal of the attraction 
 horrors have in novels. It is the force of the 
 "ide"e fixe" which paralyzes and chains. When,
 
 106 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 in the course of our lives, we see a horrible acci- 
 dent which we are unable to prevent, we are pow- 
 erless to take our eyes off, though the vision be 
 exceedingly distressing. If a human being be 
 caught in a machine-belt before us, or be dashed 
 from a carriage on a pile of rock,' we are spell- 
 bound and are forced to witness the course of 
 events to their end, because unable to withdraw 
 our gaze. In all this there is no element of pleas- 
 ure, nor can there be in the representation of such 
 things in a story, excepting always in the reflec- 
 tion upon the author's genius as a word-painter. 
 But descriptions of this sort will enthrall the 
 reader for a time. If, however, they are too long- 
 continued, he will throw off his paralysis and re- 
 fuse to submit himself longer to the influencing 
 cause. The effect is, in itself, not aesthetic. Its 
 value in literature, apart from the bearings of the 
 incident on the plot, is that its production is a 
 very good device for holding the attention. 
 Where the horrible occurrences are made the en- 
 tire plot of the story, the only permanent interest 
 is, as in " Ivan Ilyitch," the value of the narration 
 as a physiological and -psychological study. 
 
 Let us now turn to those cases of suffering, the 
 burden of which is some error, wrong, or crime 
 entailing direful consequences. In this category, 
 we may notice first, sins growing out of the rela- 
 tions of the sexes, such as form the principal sub- 
 ject of Scott's " Heart of Midlothian," George
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 
 
 107 
 
 Eliot's " Adam Bede," Hawthorne's " Scarlet Let- 
 ter," and Tolstoi's "Anna Karenina." In the first 
 two of these, crime in the form of infanticide oc- 
 curs, and the whole course of misfortune falling 
 upon a woman from irregular relations with a man 
 is set forth, forming the main interest. Yet there 
 are a good many subsidiary interests in both these 
 books. In the one the descriptions of English 
 country life, and in the other of Scotch peasantry, 
 are of themselves exceedingly entertaining, and 
 no doubt would have made the books popular 
 with an entirely different plot. Possessing this 
 background of interest, the misfortunes of the 
 two principal characters arouse sympathy, the 
 pleasurable quality of which is greatly enhanced 
 by the fact that, after undergoing grave peril, they 
 get out of their difficulties. The excitement of 
 danger always adds to the glow of satisfaction 
 when the relief comes. In addition, there is a 
 very strong moral force in the incidents, which is 
 often a source of great satisfaction to the reader. 
 He sympathizes with Effie and Hetty, but the 
 sympathy is somewhat of the parent with the 
 child upon whom he has inflicted punishment. 
 He is sorry for the delinquent, to be sure, but on 
 the whole rather glad to have him punished. But 
 the reader's sympathetic pain cannot, in the nature 
 of things, be as strong as that of the loving parent 
 for the whipped child. The reader, too, thinks 
 of the general moral and educational effect, and
 
 108 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 while he is glad that the young women escaped 
 death, he is pleased on the score of justice, moral- 
 ity, and religion that they were taught a severe 
 lesson. Those of a less stern nature, who would 
 entertain the retributory sentiments to a less de- 
 gree and whose sympathies are stronger for the 
 woes of the wrong-doers, will feel that exaltation 
 of the emotional nature which tender feeling 
 always causes, and also will have in their own way 
 a moral joy, believing that, 
 
 " The noblest pity on the earth 
 Is that bestowed on sin." * 
 
 Another reflection should occur to us with refer- 
 ence to all accounts of weakness, suffering, and 
 crime. The incidents of suffering and the charac- 
 ters undergoing it serve as a foil to set off stronger 
 characters and give them an opportunity to dis- 
 play the noble qualities of human nature : 
 
 " The gods in bounty work up storms about us, 
 That give mankind occasion to exert 
 Their hidden strength, and throw out into practice 
 Virtues which shun the day and lie concealed 
 In the smooth seasons and the calms oflife."f 
 
 Mountains would not be grand were it not for 
 plains and valleys ; strong men would not be 
 strong were none weak; goodness would not 
 shine were there no evil ; and against the ill-for- 
 
 * J. G. Holland. \ Addison.
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 109 
 
 tunes of Effie Deans and Hetty we have a proper 
 and satisfactory compensation in the characters 
 of Jeanie Deans in the one story, and Adam Bede 
 and Dinah in the other. 
 
 The "Scarlet Letter" and "Anna Kar^nina " 
 present some points of similarity with respect to 
 the present topic. It is no part of the purpose of 
 this essay to pass judgment on any book cited, 
 nor to estimate, either absolutely or comparatively, 
 its merits as a literary product, beyond what is 
 necessary for the purposes of illustration. Readers 
 will doubtless miss some of their favorites and 
 very likely be able to suggest better illustrations 
 than those I employ. This is inevitable, on ac- 
 count of differences in taste and the vast amount 
 of material to select from. All that is aimed at 
 here is to choose fairly representative examples. 
 In this view I bring together the works just men- 
 tioned. Setting aside the differences in style, in 
 incident, in scene, in nationality, there is a com- 
 munity between the two in that both are an exhi- 
 bition of the slow course of retributory suffering 
 to a woman from irregular indulgence. The con- 
 trast between them is in the final result, which in 
 the case of Anna Karnina is unbalanced mind 
 and horrible suicide, but in Hester Prynne is a 
 new life chastened and beatified, a source of com- 
 fort and help to others. The one is the cruci- 
 fixion without the resurrection, the other with it. 
 In both of these books the interest is primarily
 
 1 10 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 moral. E. M. de Vogue" speaks of " Anna Kar- 
 nina " as a " manual of morals " in Russia, yet 
 there is no question but, viewing the two from this 
 ground, the " Scarlet Letter" leaves a much better 
 impression, inasmuch as hope is brought to the 
 foreground instead of despair. This is the com- 
 pensatory relief of which I have spoken, for which 
 the reader has a conscious or unconscious longing. 
 In the Russian novel it is found, so far as it goes, 
 in the change of heart of Levin, and his contented 
 life. It must be said, however, that this did not 
 help Anna Karnina very much. The influence of 
 Tolstoi's book, then, may be educationally good ; 
 its issue, so far as relates to the Kar6nins, may sat- 
 isfy the sense of justice ; but the merciful element, 
 which appears in the " Scarlet Letter," is wanting. 
 In realistic description of suffering the inter- 
 est may be held on the principle of the idte fixe, 
 which we considered in a recent paragraph. Vic- 
 tor Hugo's " Le Dernier Jour d'un Condemn^" il- 
 lustrates this sort of writing ; and more strikingly 
 still, Dostoyevsky's " Crime and Punishment." 
 The remorse and fear of Jonas in " Martin Chuz- 
 zlewit " may also be cited among several good ex- 
 amples from Dickens. " Crime and Punishment," 
 though perhaps not so generally known as the 
 others, furnishes certainly one of the very strong- 
 est exhibitions in literature of the subjective 
 effects of crime upon the criminal, the workings 
 of fear and remorse upon an impressionable
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. m 
 
 nature, at last making life intolerable and bring- 
 ing the sufferer to the verge of madness. But in 
 every successful book containing the portrayal of 
 this sort of experience there is always something 
 to relieve the tension of the reader's mind and re- 
 deem the horror of the situation ; and those just 
 cited form no exception. The pictures of Russian 
 life in " Crime and Punishment " are entertaining, 
 and the final eventual liberation of the sufferer and 
 his spiritual redemption through the devotion of 
 the girl Sonia, who also is rescued from degrada- 
 tion, bring the story to an agreeable conclusion. 
 As for Dickens, every one knows how he alter- 
 nates tears and laughter, and never permits to 
 the reader a monotony of feeling. 
 
 Inasmuch as we shall in a subsequent chapter 
 refer to the novels of " manners," exhibiting so- 
 cial movements and conditions, we will not at 
 present dwell upon narratives of general social 
 wretchedness, such as have been produced by 
 Dickens, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Balzac, M. 
 Zola, and the Russians. They do not display any 
 sources of interest other than those already men- 
 tioned, save that of social progress and develop- 
 ment. But something more may be said with 
 reference to stories of war and battle scenes which 
 present suffering in its most terrible form. In 
 these I think there is often that predatory joy of 
 killing which was spoken of in the last chapter. 
 This surely is an element of the interest in stories
 
 112 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 of the hunting down of criminals or the destruc- 
 tion of robbers and pirates in combat. The moral 
 sense of justice reconciles us to our wolfish pleas- 
 ure and makes us believe that our lack of sym- 
 pathy or our positive antipathy is very praise- 
 worthy. Nevertheless, disguise it as we may, 
 there is a subtle, malignant, and devilish pleasure 
 in seeing people hunted, tortured, and killed. If 
 there be revenge, it adds wonderfully to this de- 
 light. Whether we read the detective stories of 
 Gaboriau, the brutal scenes of the Smollett tribe 
 of novelists, or the realistic descriptions of " Sebas- 
 topol " and " War and Peace," * we are more or 
 less animated by the ecstasy that makes the Indian 
 preparing for war dance around the fire with up- 
 lifted tomahawk and think voluptuously of the 
 scalps of the morrow. The more brutal the nature 
 the more this lust is stimulated. To be sure there 
 are comparatively few readers who are not con- 
 trolled by other and better sentiments ; but the 
 desire for vengeance we have always with us in 
 some degree ; and, quite independently of this, 
 there are always some eager to give the pollice 
 verso sign. Indeed, more of us than would admit 
 it are glad to have an infusion of the blood-fury 
 in the stories that occupy our leisure. We like to 
 see the devil " skelp " and " scaud " poor wretches 
 and hear them squeal. We admire the exhibition 
 
 * Tolstoi.
 
 EXHIBITION OF SUFFERING. 113 
 
 of the power of Ulysses in his fight with Irus, but 
 we also enjoy seeing the beggar smashed. 
 
 Further than this, all the pleasures of witness- 
 ing the display of strength and skill leading to 
 success which we mentioned fully in the last chap- 
 ter form the main interests in war scenes, with the 
 moral feelings aroused by suffering and its tender 
 suggestions as variations. The heroic generally 
 causes us to forget the brutal. Where the latter 
 is brought before us, however, we are interested 
 either from the fascination of the idte fixe, or f rom 
 latent fierceness and cruelty and the spirit of re- 
 venge in our own sentiments. It is fortunately 
 the case that on the whole the sympathetic side 
 of human nature is growing more controlling and 
 we demand more and more that our sympathies be 
 ministered unto. Then it is endurance, self-sacri- 
 fice, devotion to a cause, courage in the face of 
 attack rather than in attacking, that command our 
 greatest interest, inasmuch as we feel with Carlyle 
 that " the essential function of the soldier is not 
 killing but being killed." 
 
 To sum up : the exhibition of suffering interests 
 us sympathetically, from developing pleasurable 
 tender emotion, finding its issue in pity, sorrow, 
 tears ; morally, from its bearings on moral char- 
 acter, on justice, education, and human welfare 
 generally ; scientifically, from its psychological 
 and pathological phenomena ; brutally, from the 
 enjoyment we share with other carnivorous ani- 
 8
 
 1 14 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 mals in pursuing, tearing, and killing prey ; and, 
 once more, from the serpent fascination of the 
 idte fixe, which holds us to the contemplation of 
 horrors against our will.* 
 
 *The Forum for September, 1889, contains an excellent article 
 by Mr. James Sully, whose title, ' The Luxury of Pity," explains 
 sufficiently its relation to the present topic.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 
 
 THAT accomplished scholar and critic, Mr. 
 Brander Matthews, in an essay entitled " The 
 Philosophy of the Short-story/'* explains that one 
 great difference between the short-story and the 
 novel proper " lies in the fact that the novel, now- 
 adays at least, must be a love-tale, while the short- 
 story need not deal with love at all." " Since 
 love is almost the only thing which will give in- 
 terest to a long story, the writer of novels has to 
 get love into his tales as best he may, even when 
 the subject rebels and when he himself is too old 
 to take any interest in the mating of John and 
 Joan. But the short-story, being brief, does not 
 need a love-interest to hold its parts together, and 
 the writer of short-stories has thus a greater free- 
 dom ; he may do as he pleases ; from him a love- 
 tale is not expected." 
 
 No doubt Mr. Matthews is correct in his state- 
 ment of what has been and is the inexorability of 
 the demand for a love-interest of some sort in 
 
 * ' ' Pen and Ink. "
 
 U6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 every novel. So far has this gone that its existence 
 seems, in the minds of some, to be the distinctive 
 character of prose fiction. For instance, we run 
 across this very extraordinary definition by P. 
 Bayne : " The novel is a domestic history, whose 
 whole interest centres in a tale of love." I won- 
 der what this oracle would call Mr. Stevenson's 
 " Jekyll and Hyde " ! I suppose he would reckon 
 it as a short-story, though Mr. Matthews does not 
 think the work compressed enough to be fairly so 
 called. But a story it is ; it is highly interesting, 
 and there is no domestic history involving love. 
 If it had been a little longer, we could still have 
 got along without love ; but if it had been ex- 
 panded to three volumes, the amatory interest 
 being still absent, probably we should have missed 
 something. The reason of this is, as seems to me, 
 not that love is indispensable to interest, which is 
 surely not the case, but rather that we cannot pro- 
 duce a correct representation of any considerable 
 portion of human experience without encounter- 
 ing the influences and effects of this passion. 
 Dealing with half a dozen, a dozen, a score of 
 characters, male and female, if we cover very 
 much of their careers and take account of no man- 
 ifestation of love romantic, conjugal, or parental 
 our edifice is lop-sided, imperfectly and unnat- 
 urally constructed. Love plays so prominent a 
 part in life, has so dominant an influence on con- 
 duct, that its absence as a motive is at once felt
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 
 
 II/ 
 
 by the reader, and the plot from which it is omitted 
 seems very artificial. 
 
 The topic of suffering has served as a bridge to 
 conduct us naturally from one extreme form of 
 human interest to another. The pleasures and 
 ends which were indicated in our treatment of 
 the Exhibition of Power are, as we noted at the 
 close of Chapter VII., those of individual egoistic 
 development. They are characteristically the self- 
 ish interests. In the last chapter we saw how the 
 entrance of sympathetic emotion tended to soften 
 the selfishness of human nature and create a gen- 
 uine altruistic sentiment. We now pass to a pow- 
 erful altruistic interest : the individual-, through 
 the appetites of society and sex, coming to find 
 his happiness in that of others in forming ends of 
 life, and seeking satisfaction of them in reproduc- 
 tion or race development. Since he, the individual, 
 must die, he will endeavor to perpetuate himself 
 in his offspring. This he does instinctively, and 
 the appetites and passions leading to this result 
 are often stronger than the motives to self-preser- 
 vation. 
 
 These facts of human constitution furnish ample 
 explanation of the interest which the exhibition 
 of love in its various forms creates in the reader of 
 a novel. Love between the sexes in itself, the 
 love of husband and wife, and parental affection, 
 are the three chief modes in which the sentiment 
 is made to appear; and of these the first and third
 
 Il8 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 furnish the best situations for the development of 
 incident. Movement interests rather than rest, 
 becoming rather than being. Our attention is 
 more readily held by the process of uniting or 
 disuniting, the pursuit of an end sought, than by 
 a calm monotony of life, wherein nothing in par- 
 ticular occurs. No doubt much happier are they 
 who have no history ; but the reader of their 
 chronicles will be better satisfied if the river of 
 life flows less smoothly. 
 
 Love, as we employ the term in this chapter, 
 exhibits the workings of two natural, primary, 
 fundamental appetites: society a nd sex. The 
 former was described sufficiently in the last chap- 
 ter as the innate desire for the amicable presence 
 of others of one's kind. If we trace this want to 
 its ultimate sources, I think we should find it in 
 the pleasure of soft, warm contact, which induces 
 cows to rub against each other and squirrels to 
 nestle together. It causes a transmission of vital- 
 ity. If to this primitive sensibility we add the 
 sexual promptings, we have the foundation for 
 the establishment of gregariousness. These two 
 elements are developed in varying relations with 
 respect to each other. The society-appetite favors 
 unselfishness, because, as we saw, there is no soci- 
 ety without reciprocity. The sex-appetite is much 
 more egoistic. But even to its gratification a 
 reciprocal interest becomes important, and when 
 there is superadded parental love we often have
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 
 
 exemplified the most utter self-abnegation. The 
 sex-appetite is more intense and imperious than 
 the other, but it is also more evanescent. It often 
 goes out in smoke unless the flame be fed with 
 the fuel which the appetite for society supplies. 
 The social wants extend over the whole of life 
 and favor the formation of remote ends and pur- 
 poses, toward which the efforts of a career may 
 converge. The sex impulses are concentrated and 
 limited. They are more emotional and passional, 
 less intellectual and representative. They are 
 fiercer and less manageable. The others are more 
 sustained and more readily controlled. 
 
 There is in love between the sexes always a 
 combination of the social and the purely sexual; 
 the former issuing in the higher and more spirit- 
 ual developments of the sentiment, the latter in 
 lower appetitive satisfactions. In narrative exhi- 
 bitions of this passion it is possible, therefore, to 
 present both sides, but there are many reasons 
 why the manifestations of the sex-appetite are 
 generally not deemed fit subjects for the novelist's 
 portrayals. With regard to social interests, there 
 is a wide range from those sentiments which make 
 of love a projected life-interest, involving mar- 
 riage, children, and all the kinds of community 
 which a unity of life involves, to its spontaneous 
 breaking forth as an emotion sufficient for itself 
 in the present, without regard for its future 
 advantages and utilities. The latter exempli-
 
 120 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 fies love in its complete development as a pas- 
 sion. 
 
 Of course, the reader's interest is a sympathetic 
 one ; and, so far as the incidents call for it, there 
 exists the sympathy with suffering of which we 
 spoke in the last chapter. Many of the stories of 
 blighted affection, of harassing obstacles to the 
 fruition of love, of married unhappiness, upon 
 which George Sand is so fond of dwelling, or such 
 as we find in " Middlemarch " * or in " Daniele 
 Cortice," f illustrate these conditions. But the 
 characteristic interest is rather that which we 
 have in a strong motive force, governing action 
 and possessing the whole nature. In the words 
 of Balzac : \ " We may here remark on the infil- 
 trating, transforming power of an overmastering 
 emotion. However coarse the fibre of the indi- 
 vidual, let him be held by a strong and genuine 
 affection, and he exhales, as it were, an essence, 
 which illuminates his features, inspires his ges- 
 tures, and gives cadence to his voice. It happens 
 sometimes that the dullest soul, under the lash of 
 passion, attains to such eloquence of thought, if 
 not of language, that it seems to move in lumi- 
 nous air." Love, therefore, is really, after all 
 said, an exhibition of power, but of introsuscep- 
 tive, assimilative, constructive power, of transfigu- 
 ration and transformation ; not the triumph of 
 
 * George Eliot. f Fogga^ro. | " Pere Goriot."
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. I2 l 
 
 muscular energy nor the putting forth of brute 
 force. 
 
 Any of the great passions of human life which 
 seize hold of and possess men like anger, re- 
 venge, avarice, lust, ambition interest the reader 
 when effectively set forth by the novelist. Many 
 story-writers have made their reputation, as Bayne 
 says of Charlotte Bronte, " by the delineation of 
 one relentless and tyrannizing passion." The 
 causes of this interest have been already ex- 
 plained. But the generally benevolent and bene- 
 ficent character of love creates a superior interest 
 in those who are sufficiently cultivated to belong 
 to the recognized reading public. True, the 
 popularity of cheap tales of blood and adventure, 
 of " shilling thrillers," admonishes us not to be- 
 lieve that the educated and refined are the only 
 readers of stories. With the vulgarized and bru- 
 talized, a good love-story is either something ob- 
 scene or it is some wild romance of abduction and 
 pursuit, of jealousy and murder because of women. 
 But people of this order do not write criticisms 
 on books, nor do they give the tone to critical 
 comments. Our estimate, then, of the excellence 
 of a love-romance is based upon the fact that it 
 appeals to the more refined, the amiable, the 
 kindly, the loving. It is, hence, perfectly correct 
 to say that the interest in love is greater than in 
 any other absorbing passion, because of its more 
 humane character.
 
 122 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 Love is more aesthetic, since its painful associa- 
 tions are fewer. To be sure, the course of true 
 love may not run smooth, but in the emotion 
 itself or its satisfaction there is involved no sug- 
 gestion of pain. If Ajax be a magnificent war- 
 rior, he becomes such only by killing somebody ? 
 and we must sometimes think of -the men killed. 
 If Herbert Hollister and Stuart Goldwin, in an 
 "Ambitious Woman,"* win their hundreds of 
 thousands in Wall Street, and command our ad- 
 miration for their sagacity, their intuitive and 
 unerring judgment, we know that somebody lost ; 
 and, indeed, the meaning of that loss shortly ap- 
 pears, with all its horrors, in the case of the first- 
 named. On the other hand, in the union of two 
 personalities effected by love there is, intrinsically 
 and essentially, nothing but agreeable suggestion, 
 whether it be the " mating of John and Joan," or 
 of a lord and lady. It really is the flowering of 
 human experience, the acme of the joyful, the 
 delightful, the blissful, the beautiful. Pain is ban- 
 ished, and there is only the breath of the spring, 
 " fresh-blown roses washed in dew," " youthful 
 jollity," " wreathed smiles," and 
 
 "Sport, that wrinkled Care derides." f 
 Of love we think 
 
 * Edgar Fawcett. \ Milton : " L' Allegro."
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 123 
 
 " As of a fountain, failing never, 
 
 On whose soft marge I lie, and drink 
 Delicious draughts of joy forever." * 
 
 Thus, of the great passions, love is undoubtedly 
 the richest in aesthetic qualities. While science 
 cannot at present make this assertion, I deem it 
 probable that all the aesthetic effects which we 
 receive through the senses, whether they be the 
 delights of music or of color, perception by the 
 eye generally or by the ear, involve a stimulation 
 of amatory feeling. This is not the place to go 
 into a psychological argument on the subject, but 
 the reader who is familiar with Darwin's " Descent 
 of Man " may be reminded of the facts therein 
 collected going to prove that bright and diversi- 
 fied colors and also musical sounds are means of 
 sexual attraction. Moreover, the connection of 
 aesthetic activity with the play-impulse has already 
 occupied our attention. But play occurs from a 
 superabundance of vitality; when the spirits are 
 high, and there is more vital force than is needed 
 for self-preservation. And it is in just this condi- 
 tion that reproductive activity, mental or physical, 
 is the most pronounced. It is the excess beyond 
 what is required for the preservation and develop- 
 ment of the individual organism. Moreover, the 
 exercise of this activity is always an end in itself, 
 a primary appetitive pleasure. It needs no object 
 
 * Owen Meredith.
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION, 
 
 beyond its own satisfaction. May it not be pos- 
 sible, therefore, that we shall discover our pro- 
 ductive, creative, artistic working to be really a 
 manifestation of the forces of organic reproduc- 
 tion, and our aesthetic joy in its works the re- 
 sponse made to an appeal addressed to the same 
 vital powers ? 
 
 However this may be, it is quite certain that 
 the superior interest felt in the exhibition of love 
 both in life and in literature is the aesthetic one. 
 But this interest is of the different varieties before 
 mentioned. The greatest intensity arises from 
 consideration of the passion as such, irrespective 
 of its consequences. In this the French writers 
 vastly surpass any others, and in this English 
 novelists are singularly lacking. Such might be 
 expected from national characteristics. So far as 
 the former are concerned, in the words of Mr. W. 
 C. Brownell : * " Certainly more distinctly and 
 universally than anywhere else is it felt in France 
 that love vincit omnia that it is, as Thackeray af- 
 firms, ' immeasurably above ambition, more pre- 
 cious than wealth, more noble than name/ and that 
 ' he knows not life who knows not that.' " The 
 French value most of all, and for its own sake, 
 " the spiritual exaltation of the least egoistic of 
 human impulses. Never to have made the voy- 
 age to Cythera is to have lived in vain." f Thus, 
 
 * " French Traits " : Morality. f (Ibid.)
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 
 
 125 
 
 devoted to a passion, they develop its intensity 
 and seek all its refinements, whereas the colder 
 and calmer natures of the English think more of 
 the duration of the sentiment, its association and 
 blending with other forms of tender emotion and 
 with altruistic sympathies generally. It thus hap- 
 pens with leading English-writing novelists, as 
 Henry James remarks : * " Miss Austen and Sir 
 Walter Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, Hawthorne 
 and George Eliot, have all represented young 
 people in love with each other ; but no one of 
 them has, to the best of our recollection, described 
 anything that can be called a passion put it into 
 motion before us and shown us its various paces." 
 Then referring to George Sand, a critique upon 
 whom elicits these observations, Mr. James goes 
 on to say : " Few persons would resort to English 
 prose fiction for any information concerning the 
 ardent forces of the heart, for any ideas upon 
 them. It is George Sand's merit that she has 
 given ideas upon them, that she has enlarged the 
 novel-reader's conception of them and proved her- 
 self in all that relates to them an authority. This 
 is a great deal. From this standpoint Miss Aus- 
 ten, Walter Scott, and Dickens will appear to have 
 omitted the erotic sentiment altogether, and 
 George Eliot will seem to have treated it with 
 singular austerity. Strangely loveless, seen in this 
 
 * ' ' French Poets and Novelists " : George Sand.
 
 126 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 light, are those large, comprehensive fictions, ' Mid- 
 dlemarch ' and ' Daniel Deronda.' They seem 
 to foreign readers, probably, like vast, cold, com- 
 modious, respectable rooms, through whose win- 
 dow-panes one sees a snow-covered landscape, and 
 across whose acres of silver-lined carpet one looks 
 in vain for a fire-place or a fire." 
 
 Quite so. The English and Americans are in- 
 capable, it would seem, of dealing with love as a 
 passion. They insist on the moral complexion. 
 As M. Taine suggests,* they always say : " Be 
 moral. . . . Love is the hero of all George 
 Sand's novels. Married or not, she thinks it 
 beautiful, holy, sublime in itself ; and she says so. 
 Don't believe this, and if you believe it, don't say 
 it. It is a bad example. Love thus represented 
 makes marriage a secondary matter. ... A 
 novel of this sort is a plea for the heart, the imag- 
 ination, enthusiasm, nature ; but it is also often a 
 plea against society and law ; we do not suffer 
 society and law to be touched, directly or indi- 
 rectly. . . . George Sand paints impassioned 
 women ; paint you for us good women. George 
 Sand makes us desire to be in love ; do you make 
 us desire to be married." Now, dear friends, Eng- 
 lish and American, M. Taine is quite right. You 
 may argue that your views and your course should 
 be approved. Perhaps ; but on moral grounds. 
 
 * ' Hist, of Eng. Lit.," Book V., ch. i.
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 
 
 127 
 
 Follow your own convictions, if you please, but 
 do not pretend to any equality with George Sand, 
 for example, in the sphere which she occupies. 
 Say frankly that your stories are more moral 
 and less freely artistic ; that they do not exhibit 
 love in any fulness, but only as subsidiary to 
 marriage and moral and social interests. Then 
 when comparisons are made, your work on the 
 whole may be deemed the more wholesome, but 
 as an exhibition of a great passion it is pain- 
 fully insufficient. You cannot compete ; and it 
 will be wiser to say so, seeking for your justifica- 
 tion where you ought, in the subordination of the 
 aesthetic to the moral for the sake of human wel- 
 fare. 
 
 But in representations of that calmer love of 
 wedded life, which is really a close and increasing 
 friendship cemented by many common interests, 
 and in depicting characters in which love is always 
 controlled by morality and duty, English and 
 American novelists are greatly superior to their 
 Gallic brethren. If the French have no word in 
 their language for home, it is quite true that they 
 have little room for home or domesticity in their 
 novels. It would not be fair to say that this is 
 because they do not value the domestic life and 
 the maintenance of happy families. It is rather 
 because the regular and normal development of 
 love and marriage or marriage and wedded love 
 does not afford material for dramatic effect and is
 
 128 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 too monotonous to arouse interest in minds which 
 desire excitement and novelty. Anglo-Saxon 
 natures are different. They are satisfied with 
 what would seem tame to a Frenchman. An 
 ordinary domestic history is interesting to them, 
 inasmuch as, in the first place, they do not require 
 so much stimulation, and again, and perhaps 
 chiefly, because they think an account of the 
 " happy family " has an excellent moral and ed- 
 ucational effect. Hence they are pleased with 
 Maria Edgeworth's tales and with E. P. Roe's 
 novels. The chief interest is an ethical one ; and 
 if monotony is to be avoided, they prefer to intro- 
 duce the successful struggles of a virtuous soul 
 against temptation, to show forth the persistence 
 of fidelity, the claims of honor and of duty under 
 trying circumstances, the chastening influence of 
 suffering, and the triumph of the moral principles 
 of human nature. All these things are interest- 
 ing to readers whose minds are so constituted 
 that they can readily sympathize with the events 
 and characters of the narration from the domina- 
 tion in themselves of the domestic affections and 
 the moral sentiments in general. 
 
 Intrinsically, the perils incurred and the suffer- 
 ings experienced by an intrepid heroine who is 
 determined to follow the promptings of illicit love 
 are just as interesting as the struggle of another 
 to adhere to the path of rectitude against the de- 
 mands of overpowering passion, and her success,
 
 EXHIBITION OF LOVE. 129 
 
 though with much tribulation and unhappiness ; 
 but in the latter case the sentiment of moral ap- 
 proval will greatly heighten the effect of the story, 
 in precisely the same way as in actual life we take 
 greater pleasure in a person who has exhibited in 
 the face of obstacles and diversions a degree of 
 moral stamina which has made what we esteem 
 virtue to become ascendent in his mind and in his 
 deeds. 
 
 The sources of interest in the exhibition of love 
 in a story are thus evident, whether we behold the 
 force and movements of the passion or the various 
 associations and resultants as seen in the devel- 
 opment of family and home life. It remains for 
 us to say a word respecting the nature of the inter- 
 est aroused by minute and extreme descriptions of 
 the course of erotic appetite. We cannot disguise 
 from ourselves the fact that such interest is chiefly 
 a fascination which involves the excitation of 
 sexual appetite. But one thing must not be lost 
 sight of. The erotic passion is not constant and 
 universal throughout human life, and where it is 
 wanting, there is frequently disgust at its sug- 
 gestion. In fact, it may be said that the large 
 majority of people over forty would derive no 
 satisfaction from reading distinctively erotic lit- 
 erature. It is tedious and offensive. The wit- 
 nessing of amatory familiarities in real life is 
 not agreeable, nor is their representation in a 
 story. On the contrary, it is, esteemed indecent 
 9
 
 130 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 and even filthy, though to a person in the hey-day 
 of youth the idea of uncleanliness in such associa- 
 tions may be absolutely wanting and itself in- 
 decent. From these facts arises that singular 
 contradiction of tastes, by which we find erotic 
 stories of absorbing interest to some and pleasing 
 to their minds, while hateful to others and unspar- 
 ingly condemned by them. At all events, it is 
 evident that such tales or such episodes cannot 
 be universally interesting, quite apart from moral 
 considerations. They must appeal to a limited 
 class of readers, with the risk of great antipathy 
 from those who do not enjoy reading them.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EXHIBITION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 THE three chapters last preceding make clear 
 to us that the objects of interest in a story are 
 simply the objects of interest in human life itself. 
 The developments of individual character in ac- 
 tion, the putting forth of strength positively or 
 in resistance, the movement of vitality in achieve- 
 ment, power in some form or other these are the 
 things that detain our attention, whether in the 
 real world or that of fiction. But no man is great 
 in isolation. Whatever he accomplishes, bears 
 relation to his fellows. In considering him, we 
 also consider his environment, and whatever inter- 
 est we take in his career requires an interest in his 
 surroundings. This involves some account of the 
 general social movement ; of the ideas, the condi- 
 tions, the habits that dominate the social world. 
 The novelist cannot avoid making a " milieu" 
 an "entourage" for his characters, and it often 
 occurs that the characters themselves are made 
 secondary to and illustrative of particular social 
 conditions, which it is the author's chief aim to 
 exhibit.
 
 132 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 The decline of romantic and heroic literature is 
 very obvious. For it has been substituted, in 
 prose fiction, by novels dealing with ordinary social 
 life, with " manners," with analysis of character, 
 and with the study of motives. The reason for 
 this change is the increasing predominance of the 
 industrial spirit over the militant in governing 
 human life in general. There is no longer a career 
 for the mailed knight who goes forth with his 
 sword and lance in search of adventures. His 
 courage and heroism would only land him in the 
 penitentiary. The ideals which people form of 
 things possible to be done are those conditioned 
 by a peaceful industrial civilization, in which skill 
 supersedes brute force, and virtue is rectitude 
 rather than the soldier's valor. The objects which 
 interest the mind are determined accordingly, and 
 the novel-reader demands something akin to his 
 own occupations and agreeable to his prevailing 
 sympathies. He wants to see portrayed the 
 people of his own day and generation, with whom 
 he is at home, and who suggest something to his 
 mind. By such only is he aroused, edified, or im- 
 proved. Among these is tragedy enough and 
 comedy enough, virtue and vice sufficient for all 
 requirements. They are real to him ; he can un- 
 derstand them, and they assimilate with his own 
 thought and feeling. They are more serviceable 
 for all purposes which make the novel of value. 
 
 It may be doubted whether studies of society
 
 EXHIBITION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 133 
 
 as it is afford in themselves any better oppor- 
 tunities for aesthetic construction than do ro- 
 mances, so called. A fairy-tale may be deliciously 
 beautiful perfect as a work of art. Fouqu6's 
 " Undine " is a most charming production. Hans 
 Christian Andersen's stories are thoroughly artis- 
 tic. When we consider that the world of imagina- 
 tion is the realm of creative art, which is, after all, 
 the highest ; and that poetry, which is full of im- 
 aginative creations, is addressed to the aesthetic 
 sense most conspicuously of all forms of literature 
 we shall see that the romance may be a work of 
 very high artistic quality. But still there is the 
 fact upon which we commented in discussing real- 
 ism in Chapter VI. One sign of a great artist is 
 his ability to glorify the commonplace and make 
 us see beauty in ordinary things. A genius cannot 
 paint a tree without revealing himself, and if we 
 have the eye to see we shall recognize him, and 
 be delighted with him. A sheep is not a particu- 
 larly interesting animal ; but if Verbockhoven has 
 painted one, we stop and look at the picture. So 
 the novelist may present scenes of familiar life 
 with such consummate skill that we cannot pre- 
 vent the holding of our attention, even when we 
 do not expect to be entertained. Turg6nieff is 
 a writer who characteristically does this. " He 
 makes realism poetic."* What is there especially 
 
 * E. M. de Vogue.
 
 134 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 uncommon about a man, whose unfaithful wife 
 is separated from him, falling in love with a young 
 girl in whose family he is a frequent visitor? 
 Nor does it require much ingenuity for the author 
 to supply a false report of the death of the wife, 
 and then, after the lovers had declared themselves, 
 bring the wife back to shatter their hopes and 
 blight their lives. This is the story of " Liza," 
 which in the hands of some writers would be dull 
 and stupid, but as told by the great Russian, is 
 finished, compact, consistent, vivid, attractive, and 
 thoroughly interesting. It is such artistic power 
 that gives popularity to the works of writers like 
 Mr. Howells, of whom Col. T. W. Higginson says : 
 " His first literary principle has been to look away 
 from great passions, and rather to elevate the com- 
 monplace by minute touches." * So it is said of 
 George Eliot that " she made ordinary people 
 interesting." f Indeed, the ability to do these 
 things has been urgently claimed as one of the 
 great artistic merits of the realistic method. This 
 is the view of Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, in a 
 magazine article : ^ " Realism sets itself at work 
 to consider characters and events which are appar- 
 ently the most ordinary and uninteresting in order 
 to extract from these their full value and mean- 
 ing. It would apprehend in all particulars the 
 
 * ' ' Short Studies." f Bayard Tuckerman. 
 
 \ Atlantic Monthly, 1874.
 
 EXHIBITION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 135 
 
 connection between the familiar and the extraor- 
 dinary, and the seen and the unseen of human 
 nature. Beneath the deceptive cloak of outwardly 
 uneventful days it detects and endeavors to trace 
 the outlines of the spirits that are hidden there ; 
 to measure the changes in their growth, to watch 
 the symptoms of moral decay or regeneration ; to 
 fathom their histories of passionate or intellectual 
 problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we 
 thought nothing worthy of notice, it shows every- 
 thing to be rife with significance." 
 
 I should certainly decline to award to " realism " 
 the sole credit for " revealing " in the sense of the 
 word just employed. As I have endeavored to 
 show, the unrestricted and unqualified use of the 
 naturalistic method dulls that aesthetic perception 
 which is necessary for arriving at the soul of things. 
 Something more is needed. Mr. Lathrop really 
 concedes this, for immediately after the above 
 passage he makes the important statement : " It 
 will easily be seen, therefore, that realism calls 
 upon imagination to exercise its highest function." 
 When realism does this, it is a good thing ; but its 
 tendencies are not always that way. There is no 
 use, however, in quarrelling about words. It is 
 certain, at all events, that one of the very highest 
 achievements of art is to invest the apparently 
 uninteresting with an interest which to our minds 
 makes it cease to be commonplace, and stand out 
 with a distinctness and individuality that give it
 
 136 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 a permanent life. And however necessary to the 
 result anatomical study may be, close inspection 
 of nature as she is, actually and ordinarily, it is 
 creative genius that finally accomplishes the work. 
 
 With the progress of the industrial spirit the 
 scientific mind has become more developed and 
 scientific methods are in greater demand for every- 
 thing. Sociological and psychological analyses ex- 
 cite attention, as they would not if scientific ob- 
 servation were not a common habit. Thus, novels 
 of " experiment," as M. Zola calls them, are read 
 and become popular, whereas under the condi- 
 tions of life when romanticism was in vogue they 
 would not have been endured. The latter, as 
 Mr. Howells observes, " was the expression of a 
 world mood." " It grew naturally out of political, 
 social, and economical conditions." " It was a de- 
 velopment of civilization." In like manner, the 
 present age has produced literature after its own 
 kind. Knowledge of things as they are is de- 
 manded, and thorough knowledge. With the in- 
 crease of learning and the higher training of indi- 
 viduals to use their own faculties, people demand 
 also that better artistic work be done, and when 
 they see such work they know it. 
 
 In fine, the prevalence and success of the novels 
 of social life furnish but another illustration of 
 the truth that it is life which makes literature, and 
 that the type of fiction of any age is determined 
 by the state of thought and civilization therein.
 
 EXHIBITION OF SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 137 
 
 But we must not forget that what De Quincey calls 
 the " literature of power " is that which makes its 
 appeal to universal human experience, 'and that 
 if " the representation of social reality " be at pres- 
 ent " the proper business of the novel," it is still 
 important, as D. Masson says, that in such repre- 
 sentation the spirit be " that of the far-surveying 
 and the sublime."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE COMIC OR LUDICROUS. 
 
 OUR study thus far has indicated that in order 
 to hold the attention upon a work of fiction some 
 sort of sympathetic interest must be aroused, or 
 else a paralyzing effect be produced which in- 
 hibits escape. This last situation cannot endure 
 very long, because a narration appealing to the 
 imagination can rarely excite unpleasant emotions 
 powerful enough to prevent the natural move- 
 ments to get rid of the object producing them, 
 and because an accumulation of horrors tends to 
 monotony, which is itself detrimental to interest. 
 Even where there is sympathy aroused, no little 
 difficulty is experienced from the danger of monot- 
 ony. We have remarked how skilful writers do 
 not play long upon one emotional chord, but at- 
 tain their best effects by exciting a variety of feel- 
 ings. Where the attention is concentrated suffi- 
 ciently to create interest a considerable quantity 
 of emotion exists, the fulness of which will cause 
 uneasiness or positive pain. This must be dis- 
 posed of in some way. 
 
 Transferring the attention to some object
 
 COMIC OR LUDICROUS. 
 
 139 
 
 strongly contrasted with the former one will ac- 
 complish this result in many cases ; in order, how- 
 ever, to effect the transfer, the new object must 
 possess the power of concentrating a considerable 
 amount of feeling upon itself. But merely chang- 
 ing the object while still exciting and massing 
 feeling will not furnish the relief needed. The 
 very process of changing becomes monotonous 
 and tiresome. A complete dissipation of aroused 
 and concentrated emotion is required, a full relax- 
 ation from the strain of attention. This is most 
 perfectly secured by laughter in its various de- 
 grees. 
 
 There is much yet to be explained in the phe- 
 nomenon of laughter. Sydney Smith says that 
 mirth is due to the discovery of a congruity in a 
 seeming incongruity, or the reverse. The seeing 
 of a joke is analogous to the pleasant mental 
 feeling experienced in discovering something 
 quite new, or in suddenly coming to understand 
 something not known before. But in case of the 
 joke the discovery comes as a surprise, some- 
 thing achieved without toil, and the pleasurable 
 effect is thereby much heightened. In relation to 
 the need of a wooden pavement before St. Paul's, 
 Sydney Smith remarked : " If the Dean and the 
 Chapter would only lay their heads together the 
 thing would be done." Here the " laugh comes 
 in " when the mind perceives a congruity in the 
 midst of extremely incongruous things. It makes
 
 140 . PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 no difference whether the implication of wooden- 
 headedness, or stupidity, as against the Dean and 
 the Chapter, be true or not. The striking out of 
 a resemblance unexpectedly is quite enough to 
 secure the effect of mirth. 
 
 This example illustrates the existence of an- 
 other element in the production of mirth, which is 
 pointed out by Dr. Bain, and consists in the deg- 
 radation of some person or thing ordinarily pos- 
 sessing dignity. The same idea is contained in 
 Hobbes's theory that " laughter is a sudden glory 
 arising from sudden conception of some eminency 
 in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of 
 others, or with our own formerly." In the exam- 
 ple last cited laughter arises from the exposure of 
 the inferiority of those who are ordinarily held in 
 solemn reverence. We enjoy having them " taken 
 down a peg." Mr. Herbert Spencer asserts that 
 the incongruity perceived in the ludicrous is al- 
 ways a descending, never an ascending, incongru- 
 ity. 
 
 " What should be great you turn to farce." * 
 Mr. Spencer, however, does not lay stress on the 
 fact of exultation over degradation so much as on 
 the circumstance of passing from something great 
 to something small. It would seem, though, that 
 the state of mind described by Hobbes, and more 
 particularly by Dr. Bain, is generally found pres- 
 
 * Prior.
 
 COMIC OR LUDICROUS. 
 
 141 
 
 ent when we are moved to laughter. In the 
 savage mind laughter is the exultation of victory 
 or revenge. The warrior's joy over the discom- 
 fited foe is his mirth. So, more civilized men of 
 coarse instincts are convulsed over the misadven- 
 tures of any one witnessed in horse-play or prac- 
 tical jokes. The degrading situations of a clown 
 in the circus afford infinite amusement to such a 
 person. He finds his comedy in buffoonery and 
 laughs when some one is put to a disadvantage. 
 
 If we look into the matter closely we shall find 
 the same thing where, perhaps, we should not ex- 
 pect to find it, namely, in the geniality and kind- 
 liness of humor. As the sympathetic feelings are 
 developed in human nature we are not so prone 
 to laugh at the misfortunes of others. A strong 
 feeling of pity will defeat laughter. If we see a 
 man by accident pitched head over heels into the 
 water the ridiculousness of the situation does not 
 appear till it is apparent that he is not hurt. 
 Then, when he comes out, puffing and blowing, 
 we laugh. Conscious of our power to help him, 
 seeing that he is not seriously injured, we still 
 enjoy observing that he is uncomfortable. In a 
 more refined degree, the enjoyment of humor 
 consists in this modified love of humiliating some 
 one, wherein, as Dr. Bain says, " the indignity is 
 disguised and, as it were, oiled by some kindly 
 infusion such as would not consist with the un. 
 mitigated glee of triumphant superiority." " Sly
 
 142" PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 digs," remote, disguised attacks, subtle suggestions 
 of disparagement, wherein lies no real animosity, 
 gratify at once the natural predatory inclinations 
 and comport with the superior control of the sym- 
 pathetic sentiments. 
 
 The fact that different things are comical to 
 different people is readily explained from what 
 has gone before. It depends upon a man's mental 
 constitution whether or not he will laugh. A 
 writer in the Spectator observes that because 
 a refined man will not laugh at buffoonery, but 
 will at a finely wrought epigram of Sydney Smith, 
 it does not follow that he sees no joke in the 
 former, but only a very little joke, for which he 
 does not care, because he finds others so much 
 better. It is the difference between vin ordinaire 
 and Chateau Lafitte. 
 
 The circumstances, however, have much to do 
 with laughter. When they are such as to involve 
 constraint the sense of the ludicrous is aroused 
 by more insignificant things. A dog trotting up 
 the aisle in the midst of a church service excites 
 merriment because of the very fact that laughter 
 is out of place and propriety demands that it 
 shall not be indulged. In a court of justice a 
 poor joke will go farther and have more effect 
 than in general conversation, for the reason that 
 the ordinary severity and solemnity of the pro- 
 ceedings tire the participants or spectators and 
 they are glad of the slightest relief. As Dr.
 
 COMIC OR LUDICROUS. 
 
 143 
 
 Bain says : " The mirthful is the aspect of ease, 
 freedom, abandon, and animal spirits. The seri- 
 ous is constituted by labor, difficulty, and the 
 necessities of our position. . . . It is always 
 a gratifying deliverance to pass from the severe 
 to the easy side of affairs, and the comic conjunc- 
 tion is one form of the transition." * 
 
 Whatever be the varying causes of laughter, or 
 the feelings which constitute a sense of the ludi- 
 crous, the relief is always relief from a mental 
 tension. There is a dissipation of concentrated 
 energy without effort, a restoration of equilibrium 
 which is comfortable and exhilarating. Mr. Spen- 
 cer calls attention to the fact that the discharge 
 of surplus feeling which results from the percep- 
 tion of a " descending incongruity" pervades the 
 nervous system of the viscera, stimulating the 
 internal organs as well as the muscles, the heart 
 and the stomach coming in for a good part of the 
 overflow. It thus is true that mirth assists diges- 
 tion, and the man of jollity is not a dyspeptic. f 
 No doubt this is the case within limitations. The 
 sparkle of wit, the pleasantry of humor, the in- 
 dulgence in the comic, produce a pleasurable state 
 of emotion highly desirable to cultivate. 
 
 As in life, so in fictitious literature, represen- 
 tative of life. A story can be written which 
 
 * " Emotions and Will," ch. xiv. 
 f " Physiology of Laughter."
 
 144 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 will interest, even if the comic or ludicrous do 
 not appear. But, unless it be a short story, the 
 absence generally will be felt. Like love, laughter 
 is a universal experience, occurring all the time 
 and in a great variety of situations. With many 
 characters moving through different scenes there 
 must be sometimes and somewhere mirth-provok- 
 ing conditions and circumstances. To leave out 
 and ignore such indicates a defect in artistic skill. 
 The drama of life represented is imperfect. In 
 addition to this, the failure of interest from monot- 
 ony is much more apt to occur where the amus- 
 ing is wanting. Thus the writer who refuses to 
 use the ludicrous as a solvent for the concentrated 
 intensity of emotion he has developed through his 
 narration will find that presently he cannot arouse 
 powerful emotion at all, and his attempts will 
 only result in boring and fatiguing instead of 
 interesting his readers. The exhibition of the 
 comic tends to the conservation of interest by 
 relieving monotony and removing the painful 
 strain of sympathetic attention. 
 
 It should be observed, though, that these ben- 
 eficial effects may be entirely nullified by too con- 
 tinuous or frequent attempts to introduce the 
 ludicrous into a story. Jokes, or ridiculous situa- 
 tions, get to be as tiresome as too serious depic- 
 tions. Comic books, wholly given up to laughter 
 excitation, are generally very tedious. The pro- 
 fessional humorist is apt to become a bore and a
 
 COMIC OR LUDICROUS. 145 
 
 nuisance. To sustain interest variety in the men- 
 tal movement is required, and even if a writer 
 be gifted with extraordinary brilliancy in wit or 
 humor, it is always well for him not to be as 
 funny as he can, and not to keep up his fun too 
 long.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE GENERAL SUBJECT REVIEWED. 
 
 IT may now be expedient to consider the whole 
 problem presented in connection with the general 
 theme, to summarize the results attained, and to 
 ascertain what questions remain to be asked and 
 answered, as well as to determine what special 
 branches of the subject require further treatment. 
 
 At the outset we limited the term Fiction to 
 prose composition in the form of the story, tale, 
 or novel ; such limitation, however, being for the 
 purposes of this essay and in accordance with 
 usage, although a broader application of the word 
 may be quite legitimate. We found our starting- 
 point in the fact that people read fiction. If 
 novels were not read and readable we should not 
 have them. The first general query then presented 
 itself: What is it in a story which interests the 
 reader and holds his attention ? In answer to 
 this we found that interest is only another name 
 for pleasure derived from the reading, that the 
 source of such pleasure may be aesthetic, scientific, 
 or moral, and that the three may contribute to 
 the general effect in varying proportions. We
 
 GENERAL SUBJECT REVIEWED. 147 
 
 may behold something beautiful, we may acquire 
 knowledge, and we may have our moral sentiments 
 and our conduct beneficially affected by the peru- 
 sal of a book of fiction. For any one or all of 
 these reasons we may be pleased with it. 
 
 We further noted that fiction is a representa- 
 tion of human experience, or that of beings with 
 like faculties to those of men. The question then 
 arose : Is not that the most interesting and the 
 most perfect work which most exactly and ac- 
 curately reproduces a section of such experience 
 as it actually occurs? The answer to this query 
 we found to cover a wide range of discussion. 
 Among other things, we saw that experience itself 
 involves a selective process, combining details into 
 one whole in which the general impression pre- 
 vails and to which the particulars are subordinated. 
 Hence in the story, assembling details without 
 careful attention to the general effect and plan is 
 fatal to interest, except it be a scientific one. If 
 we cater to this kind and foster it, we presently 
 find ourselves leaving behind the realm of art and 
 passing into that of science. Under the sway of 
 the latter the tendency must be to eliminate ficti- 
 tious literature. Exact truth is the ideal, and the 
 story is only an imperfect mode of expression, 
 suited to those minds which are not able to assimi- 
 late bald scientific statements. It is only the ad- 
 ministration of wholesome medicine by a sugar- 
 coated pill. As people grow better educated, the
 
 1 48 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 tale or romance ought to disappear. Art becomes 
 extinguished as no longer necessary. 
 
 If we desire to preserve and develop the aes- 
 thetic interests, then, and the moral as well, the 
 selective activities must be brought into play. If 
 we represent experience, accuracy and exactness 
 are necessary, but a skill in combination and con- 
 struction is just as important as correct copying 
 of nature. There must be an ideal to direct the 
 work. Under this direction choice is made of the 
 things to be reproduced, and the hand is guided 
 in accomplishing the reproduction. The result is 
 a whole which is true to nature in its details, but 
 in which those details have been gathered, put to- 
 gether, and connected in an organic relation by a 
 creative power. 
 
 We thus saw that " naturalism," if adopted as 
 the governing theory of novelistic construction, 
 would impose a limitation upon such construction 
 quite inadmissible a limitation which literature 
 never has endured and never will submit to, and 
 which would be destructive of this particular form 
 of literary production. Its use is disciplinary and 
 preparatory, and, as such, of great value. The 
 artist must be able to reproduce nature accurately, 
 and hence must be thoroughly acquainted with 
 nature's anatomy. He must be trained, he must 
 learn how to use his eye and his hand, and, if 
 necessary, be a long while learning. But when he 
 has learned, his work is not done ; the field is only
 
 GENERAL SUBJECT REVIEWED. 149 
 
 just opened to him. Nor must he allow himself to 
 think that the memoranda of his dissections are 
 to be the final product of his energy. 
 
 Inasmuch as conclusions respecting " realism," 
 or "naturalism," and "idealism," or "romanti- 
 cism," cannot furnish a full explanation of interest 
 in a story, and since there must always be a selec- 
 tion of objects of interest from a great number of 
 uninteresting things in experience, we found it 
 necessary to pursue the inquiry further as to what 
 does interest a reader. We learned that whatever 
 interests people in real life holds their attention 
 in fiction. An exhibition of power or force in ac- 
 tion or resistance, especially human energy, will 
 command that attention. Conflict and triumph, 
 achievements under difficulties, suffering and con- 
 duct under pain, love and its manifestations, fur- 
 nish material for the story-teller to construct an 
 interesting narrative. Individual development in 
 its environment, and social development through 
 the action and reaction of its controlling forces, 
 both supply legitimate subjects for the novelist's 
 art. Beyond this the special tastes of the reader 
 will determine whether or not he be pleased. War 
 and cruelty will delight some, peace and kindliness 
 others. Political movements will commend them- 
 selves to certain readers, novels of " manners " 
 and social movements will gratify a different class. 
 Since the things of contemporaneous interest 
 principally occupy men's minds, moulding their
 
 150 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 thoughts and governing their feelings, that story 
 will have the most readers which embodies and 
 reproduces some phase of current life. For like 
 reasons, portraitures of universal traits in human 
 character attract and hold the attention. And if 
 there be in the minds of people generally an under- 
 lying thought or belief struggling for expression, 
 the novelist who understands and brings it out is 
 sure of success. 
 
 Once more, we observed that relaxation of the 
 strain of attention was important to a sustained 
 interest, and that while change of scenes and 
 variety of action would often accomplish a good 
 deal in this direction, it was highly essential now 
 and then to dissipate more thoroughly the sympa- 
 thetic emotion aroused and concentrated by the 
 narrative. Therefore, the excitation of laughter 
 by the representation of comic or ludicrous situa- 
 tions, or by suggestions of them, is a most valu- 
 able means of preventing fatigue in the reading of 
 a story and of freshening the reader's pleasure in 
 its development. Wit and humor thus become 
 of great consequence in the art of the novelist. 
 
 Now that we have investigated the sources of 
 interest in a fictitious literary construction, and 
 shown (according to our lights) what makes a story 
 interesting, the further question arises : Should 
 everything that is interesting to anybody be made 
 the subject of the constructive writer's art ? This 
 is not a question of " naturalism " or " romanti-
 
 GENERAL SUBJECT REVIEWED. 151 
 
 cism," though sometimes it is esteemed to be so. 
 It is a question of the relative importance of the 
 aesthetic, the scientific, and the moral elements 
 which, as we have seen, may enter into the inter- 
 est of a work of fiction. Antagonisms may here 
 arise which affect very decidedly the whole theory 
 of artistic construction. That which is aesthetic- 
 ally pleasing may be immoral ; that which is un- 
 scientific may be artistic ; that which is moral may 
 be repulsive as aesthetically considered. Again, 
 the minds of different persons are so differently 
 constituted that what seems moral to one may 
 appear immoral to another ; what gives aesthetic 
 pleasure here may fail to do so there. If on any 
 of the grounds specified a story is interesting to 
 one, but is reprobated by another, is there any 
 proper restriction of the exercise of creative skill 
 in the interest of the community, and, if so, to 
 what extent and in what cases ? 
 
 It will readily be seen that we have presented 
 the most serious problem connected with fiction 
 in literature. A conflict is always raging over 
 this question of the relations of the aesthetic and 
 moral. Works of art are all the time suffering con- 
 demnation on account of their alleged immorality. 
 On the other hand, if a story be written to subserve 
 a moral purpose it is apt to be criticised as stupid 
 and inartistic. Opposite judgments of books are 
 formed by different people according as they fol- 
 low aesthetic or moral standards. It is highly im-
 
 !52 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 portant that he who wishes to become a story, 
 writer should understand exactly what he is about 
 when he forms the plan of his tale ; shall appreci- 
 ate how far he is appealing to each of the three 
 great interests in a work of fiction, and how far he 
 may disregard one for the sake of the other. It 
 is also desirable for the reader, in order to form a 
 just estimate of a book, to know what canons may 
 be laid down by which properly to measure its 
 value. We shall, therefore, devote ourselves now 
 to a consideration of the questions just suggested. 
 After answering them as well as we may be able, 
 we shall be in a position to give such final conclu- 
 sions respecting both the construction and the 
 criticism of a work of fiction as may be needed to 
 complete this essay.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 
 
 IT is indispensable to a clear comprehension of 
 the theory of art that we keep before us the truth, 
 already fully developed in earlier pages, that es- 
 sentially all art is creation. This is as true of 
 what is termed reproductive or imitative art as it 
 is of any other. A work of art is a product of the 
 constructive power of the human mind, introduced 
 as a new thing into the objective world. As such 
 it is something done in realization of an ideal. In 
 appreciating the work it is necessary for the ob- 
 server to understand to some degree the ideal. 
 He must be able to see what the artist had in 
 mind in order to judge of the resultant product. 
 If, then, it be well done, according to an ideal ap- 
 prehended by the criticising mind, there is cer- 
 tainly aroused an aesthetic pleasure, greater or less 
 according to the degree of excellence. This last 
 may depend upon a variety of causes, in all of 
 which, however, the difficulty of the achievement 
 is an important element. That which the most of 
 men cannot do elicits admiration ; much more 
 that which artists generally are unable to achieve.
 
 154 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 The reader will remember the remark of Arre'at, 
 before quoted, to the effect that the true aesthetic 
 idea in work is that of difficulty conquered, and 
 which seems to have been conquered freely, or for 
 the sake of the conquest. Wherever this appears 
 an aesthetic emotion is produced, independently of 
 the subject-matter of the work itself. We say : 
 Here is a fine thing, showing great power and 
 genius. 
 
 It is quite true, therefore, that an artistic crea- 
 tion may give pleasure in itself, because it is 
 aesthetic, irrespective of any scientific or moral 
 value. In order, however, to get at the bottom of 
 the matter, the question must be asked : What is 
 the aesthetic pleasure? Is it in itself good or not? 
 This last question we answered in the affirmative 
 in Chapter V., and in the same connection made 
 whatever investigation we were able into the 
 nature of the pleasure we term aesthetic. In the 
 light of what we found we must be prepared to 
 admit that a work of art, aesthetically pleasing, 
 justifies its own existence ; and since it exists for 
 all, not perishing with the using, "a joy forever," 
 it has a social and thus a moral value, because it is 
 aesthetic, and so far forth as it is so. 
 
 If this were all that is to be said the solution 
 of the problem would be easy. In reality it is 
 much more complicated. We remember one of 
 the essential elements of aesthetic pleasure to be 
 that the object which produces it shall be so ex-
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 155 
 
 hibited that the disagreeable is thrown into the 
 background or minimized. And we also noted 
 that what is disagreeable to one is not to another. 
 If, however, something which is unpleasant is 
 brought before or suggested to the mind, the 
 aesthetic impression is weakened. A work of art 
 under such circumstances is less beautiful. Ac- 
 cording to the temperament of individuals, defects 
 in form and repulsive suggestions of the subject- 
 matter alike impair the aesthetic interest, because 
 they violate an aesthetic law. The aesthetic value 
 is depreciated. 
 
 Morality is a necessity of social life. The re- 
 lations of human beings to each other are organic, 
 and conduct must be regulated to some degree by 
 every one with reference to others. Under the 
 pressure of the social situation of mankind, ideals 
 of duty grow and a moral sensibility is developed. 
 As this sense increases in power, it tends more 
 and more to dominate the whole mental nature 
 and to control conduct. That which is right is 
 approved and that which is wrong is repugnant. 
 The moral consequences of actions are regarded 
 closely and educational influences become of im- 
 portance. Moral men and women please and the 
 immoral are displeasing. Our sympathies are with 
 righteousness and our aspirations are toward 
 moral ideals. 
 
 Such being the case, it is evident that the 
 growth of a moral sensibility must modify the
 
 156 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 aesthetic sensibility. If a work of art offends the 
 moral susceptibilities strongly, its beauty departs 
 from it. It may be well executed, but it dis- 
 pleases, shocks, horrifies. It is ugly, not beauti- 
 ful, and we turn away from it with repugnance. 
 A work of art it may be, but not of high art. It 
 does not fully satisfy the conditions of aesthetic 
 approval. It must inevitably follow from these 
 considerations that the sense of beauty and artis- 
 tic excellence is not independent of the moral 
 sense, because the latter helps to form the artistic 
 ideal. Regard for it is a condition of aesthetic 
 pleasure. Equally inevitable is the conclusion 
 that it is impossible to eliminate the moral from 
 aesthetic judgments and to divorce morality and 
 art. If, then, we say that a work of real art is 
 therefore moral, true as the statement may be, it 
 does not exclude the further truth that the moral 
 element has been necessary to make that work a 
 truly artistic product. 
 
 There are various modes in which ethical senti- 
 ments influence people in the way of affecting 
 their aesthetic appreciation. Of these modes two 
 general classes may roughly be made : the one, of 
 the effects the work may have upon conduct and 
 character ; the other, in the revelation made of the 
 mind and character of the artist himself. Consid- 
 ering the first of these, we are offended if an es- 
 sentially false view of human experience is pre- 
 sented by which people would be misled to their
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 157 
 
 detriment. Arguments in support of evil courses 
 by showing light or beneficial consequences flow- 
 ing therefrom are of this order. Unless such 
 arguments are overcome and a proper balance 
 restored, the moral sensibilities are painfully dis- 
 turbed. We are displeased with the work because 
 of its untruth, and the injury which is possible to 
 result from this want of fidelity to truth. Our 
 moral (and also, in this case, our scientific) senti- 
 ments cause us to regard the art-product as imper- 
 fect. It fails as to fitness, proportion, order, 
 keeping, congruity. It is not well done. Often- 
 times, to be sure, this moral assertion is very 
 unreasonable and unjustifiable. It has sway be- 
 cause of the low degree of the individual's in- 
 telligence. Of this we need not at present take 
 account ; we are only remarking one of the cases 
 in which the ethical sentiment makes itself felt. 
 Another illustration, and one exhibiting moral 
 emotion in its purity, is found in the indignation 
 which is excited when distinctly evil passions are 
 encouraged and stimulated, or are thought to be, 
 by a work of art. Where devilishness seems to be 
 dominant we lose all patience and become blind 
 to everything else. The impression may even be 
 that of ugliness, against which beauties that some 
 might readily see have no countervailing force. 
 
 In all these cases there is a reversion to the art- 
 ist and a lower opinion formed of him, which still 
 further impairs the work. We think he is not
 
 I 5 8 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 skilful, not clever, not a man of genius, else his 
 judgment would have been truer. He would have 
 seen that he was presenting a partial or one-sided 
 view. He would have been conscious that the 
 observer, unless of inferior intelligence, could not 
 take pleasure in what he produces. He is deficient 
 in his understanding of what constitutes good 
 art, he fails to read human character, and he is 
 unable to form those ideals which give the fullest 
 inspiration for artistic essays. Thus, it being im- 
 possible, as we have noted, to remove the person- 
 ality of the artist from estimates of his work, 
 moral sentiments may so powerfully influence 
 people as to form and control their aesthetic judg- 
 ments and artistic sense from despising or con- 
 demning the author as well as his production. 
 
 This seems rather extreme, but many of us 
 have seen instances quite bearing out the above 
 assertion. Prejudice is blind, and strong feeling 
 will result in a blinding antipathy. But even 
 though increase of intelligence produces a more 
 just and evenly balanced mind, artists must not 
 expect that moral considerations will cease to in- 
 fluence judgments upon works of art. This never 
 can be, for the reasons stated : 
 
 " Truth and Good are one, 
 And Beauty dwells with them, and they in her, 
 With like participation."* 
 
 * Akenside.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 159 
 
 What can and ought to be done is to so educate 
 the human mind as to create a true moral per- 
 spective, to cause the whole field of life and con- 
 duct to be surveyed and things to be seen in their 
 true relations, to secure a correct estimate of the 
 degree of morality or immorality in particular 
 things. Then calm judgment will take the place 
 of that moral fury which is itself immoral, and the 
 mere fact that one's prejudices are offended will 
 not suffice for the condemnation of a work of art 
 which has many merits in the eyes of him who 
 has a wider comprehension and a deeper insight. 
 
 The true philosophy of this subject is found in 
 recognizing the general correspondence and inter- 
 dependence of ideals of Beauty, Truth, and Good- 
 ness. As I have remarked elsewhere,* the same 
 ideal may be an ideal of truth, beauty, or good- 
 ness, according as it is viewed ; that is to say, the 
 same mental picture or fiction may serve the pur- 
 pose of a scientific ideal ; of awakening pleasure, 
 or of an emotive ideal ; of inspiring volition, or a 
 volitional ideal ; and it is not easy to say in what 
 degree each influences the others. For the im- 
 pressions of beauty, truth, and utility are often 
 demanded. The utility of an object, in fact, often 
 determines its beauty, as we see prominently ex- 
 emplified in architecture, where a pillar, an arch, 
 or a foundation is totally destitute of aesthetic 
 
 * " System of Psychology," ch. lii., vol. ii.
 
 l6o PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 effect unless it subserve the ends of the edifice. 
 Very few things can be cited as good which do 
 not carry with them the value of truth. Scientific 
 ideals lie at the basis of ideals of goodness. 
 Again, the utility of some things depends upon 
 their beauty, while the members of the whole 
 class of aesthetic ideals have utility as being objects 
 of pleasurable contemplation, and thus ends to be 
 sought. Scientific ideals being peculiarly related 
 to cognition, aesthetic ideals to emotion, and 
 moral ideals to volition and action, their close 
 connection and interfusion is necessitated from 
 the psychological interdependence of cognition, 
 feeling, and volition themselves. 
 
 After these general remarks, we will proceed to 
 a more particular consideration of that branch of 
 artistic production which is the subject of this 
 essay. What has been said as to the impossibility 
 of avoiding the influence of moral sentiments 
 applies with special force to this department of 
 art. As we saw in the opening chapters, not only 
 are moral and scientific values found in stories, 
 but works of fiction are often written with a defi- 
 nite moral or scientific purpose. Indeed, in the 
 minds of some its didactic end has frequently 
 been considered the sole raison d'etre of the novel. 
 These facts should not be lost sight of, though, 
 happily, broader views generally prevail. Yet, 
 while the reading public does not require that a 
 story be written with a moral purpose, there is
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 161 
 
 prevalent a strong feeling that it shall not be im- 
 moral or of unhealthy educational tendency. If 
 it is so, its artistic merit is diminished. 
 
 It is quite certain that no universal rules can be 
 laid down, upon the topic of moral effect, as to 
 the selection or exclusion of subjects, nor as to 
 the method of treatment when once a subject is 
 chosen. People do not think alike ; they are dif- 
 ferently susceptible to influences, and there is no 
 uniformity of standard either of ethical or educa- 
 tional principles. Accordingly, in our discussion 
 we shall examine a few of the leading particulars 
 in fiction composition with respect to which the 
 charge of immoral influence or effect is likely to 
 be brought. These cases we shall consider, with 
 a view of ascertaining how far such a charge can be 
 substantiated, and the nature of the effect itself. 
 
 In the first place, we should notice such stories 
 as by their plot, by the conversation of their char- 
 acters, or by the interjected sentiments of the 
 author, assault existing religious or political insti- 
 tutions. No doubt in all cases the supporters of 
 such institutions would denounce works of this 
 character as both immoral and criminal. The lat- 
 ter, indeed, they may be when not the former. A 
 crime is not necessarily immoral. Criminality is a 
 creation of law. Reading the Bible may be made 
 a crime, but it would hardly be considered an act 
 against morality. In Virginia people were once 
 actually convicted of and punished for the crime
 
 162 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 of teaching slaves to read the Bible. Whatever 
 by law is made an offence against the State is 
 criminal, but not therefore immoral. Reproba- 
 tion of a book because it is a protest against ex- 
 isting authority may thus be very severe, and yet 
 it could not be considered of immoral influence, 
 except on theories which identify morality with 
 submission to authority. Such theories prevail, 
 however, at some times and places, and have pre- 
 vailed very extensively in the past. Through 
 them sentiments are created which prevent ar- 
 tistic value from being recognized and tend to 
 repress genius. 
 
 Living in an enlightened age, and in a country 
 where speech is free, I do not propose to take up 
 space to argue in favor of the right to criticise the 
 established, either in politics or religion. Though 
 we must allow the melancholy fact that prejudice 
 does render men both deaf and blind, we may 
 safely maintain, wherever we find on close analy- 
 sis that the gravamen of the accusation of im- 
 morality against a novel lies in its opposition to 
 the domination of authority as such, that the 
 charge has no foundation. In such a case, we 
 ought to pray that men may become enlightened, 
 so that they may see the truth and by the truth 
 may be made free from a debasing slavery fatal 
 to honesty and the truest morality. If, then, we 
 should be told that a story is " bad," and on inquiry 
 should discover that our critic means it is bad be-
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 163 
 
 cause an argument might be drawn from it against 
 monarchy, or republicanism, against the Romish 
 Church, or episcopacy, or presbyterianism, or ag- 
 nosticism, we may safely discard the adverse judg- 
 ment and try to eliminate from our minds what- 
 ever bias may lurk there by reason of our own 
 predilections. Art cannot be understood or ap- 
 preciated without a broad and judicial mind. We 
 need not hesitate to say, therefore, that any book 
 condemned as pernicious, nominally or really, on 
 the ground that it is subversive of established 
 authority, should not for that reason be set aside. 
 Such an objection should rather be wholly ignored ; 
 and unless we are able to ignore it, we are not 
 competent to pass judgment on the work. Its 
 morality or immorality has nothing to do with 
 such considerations, much less its excellence as 
 a work of art. 
 
 Let us now turn to questions of the depiction 
 of that which is conceded to be evil, apart from 
 any declaration of authority. From our present 
 consideration we will leave out illustrations of the 
 sexual passion for separate treatment a little later. 
 We shall have remaining those promptings of a 
 wicked nature which lead to offences of various 
 sorts against life, liberty, and property. Of these 
 murder is the chief, and may be taken as a typical 
 example. Is the representation of the unlawful 
 killing of human beings and the circumstances 
 leading thereto immoral? If it be, and we are to
 
 164 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 abolish tragedy in fiction, certainly a large amount 
 of romantic literature would have to be destroyed, 
 and with it a great many masterpieces. Surely 
 bloodthirstiness cannot be ignored in human life, 
 and if the novelist makes his selection of impor- 
 tant characters from the cruel and the murderous, 
 he will at least be likely to arouse that interest 
 which monstrosity evokes. Besides, the develop- 
 ment of incident issuing at last in murder is usu- 
 ally startling enough to hold the reader's atten- 
 tion on the principle of the id^e fixe. 
 
 The immoral effect of tales involving blood- 
 shed does not come from the facts introduced but 
 rather from their coloring. If murder be digni- 
 fied and justified, and if a murderer be painted as 
 a hero, undoubtedly an influence is exerted over 
 the mind of an immature reader formative of a 
 false ideal of character. The same influence may 
 obtain also with the more mature, though in less 
 degree. Walter Scott, perhaps, is the most suc- 
 cessful of any writer in making homicide charming, 
 and in elevating thugs to the rank of demi-gods. 
 His heroes, from Richard Cceur de Lion through 
 the list, are chiefly brutal ruffians, over whom the 
 false splendor of the ideals of chivalry has cast a 
 glamour. The highest and noblest sentiments are 
 ascribed to men who would not hesitate to slay 
 each other in a quarrel over some trifling matter 
 of " honor." They have not the faintest idea of 
 a complete all-around, comprehensive morality.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 165 
 
 Yet they are so presented as to claim admira- 
 tion, and to receive it from most readers. It 
 would startle people to hear Sir Walter's novels 
 charged with immorality, and it would be very 
 difficult for the average reader to consider them 
 as obnoxious to such a charge. The reason for 
 this state of things is, I opine, the remoteness of 
 the danger of any one being corrupted by Scott's 
 representations of character, coupled with his 
 admirable style of depiction, and the scientific in- 
 terest aroused in the manner and morals of a de- 
 parted age. People are not incited to murder and 
 robbery by reading the poems of Homer or the 
 books of the Pentateuch, though, in both, these 
 crimes be praised, and indeed commanded by di- 
 vine authority. The environment is entirely dif- 
 ferent from that of the reader, and while the moral 
 sense of disapproval may sometimes be stirred, it 
 is at once balanced by the reflection that the 
 reader lives in happier and better times, where 
 violence is no longer prevalent, and where, if it 
 occur, the offender will encounter the prison and 
 the hangman. Our Rob Roys of the present day 
 may have just as excellent traits as their proto- 
 type, but the condition of civilization is such that 
 they cannot be heroes unless it be in Kentucky. 
 The danger of immoral effect from tales of blood 
 is much increased where the scene is laid in cir- 
 cumstances so nearly like the surroundings of the 
 reader as to influence his own conduct insensibly,
 
 166 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 to convince him that homicide is justifiable and 
 that private revenge is proper, and indeed manly. 
 In Mr. Marion Crawford's story, " Greifenstein," 
 the owner of a castle, living contentedly enough 
 with his wife, receives a visit from a brother from 
 whom he had been estranged. Over their wine at 
 dinner the discovery is made that the wife was the 
 woman who had formerly married the visitor and 
 deserted him ; whereupon the two brothers con- 
 clude that the only thing to do is to strangle the 
 woman and then each commit suicide. All this 
 is successfully accomplished. Of course, the men 
 do these things from the highest motives. It is 
 morally necessary to choke the wife and shoot 
 themselves. The author does not justify this, 
 but he presents us with two very respectable men 
 who do. Mr. Edgar Saltus, in " Mr. Incoul's Mis- 
 adventure," describes Mr. Incoul as taking his 
 revenge upon a supposed adulterous wife by giv- 
 ing her a sleeping draught, then turning on the gas 
 after closing the windows of her chamber and lock- 
 ing the door with the key on the inside by means 
 of a pair of pincers used from without. Then, 
 after the funeral, he goes about his avocations, 
 relieved that he has got through with a disagreea- 
 ble business ; his " misadventure " having been 
 his marriage, and the unpleasant necessity of hav- 
 ing to murder his wife an unpleasantness, how- 
 ever, that a gentleman may have to encounter and 
 endure, and for which he should be prepared as
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE, 167 
 
 for any other of the petites miseres de la vie, M. 
 de Maupassant, in " L'Ordonnance," finds a climax 
 in the colonel, after the suicide of his wife, driven 
 thereto by double adultery on her part (and after 
 the receipt of a letter written by her before death 
 setting forth the details of her sins), calling in his 
 offending orderly and shooting him down instantly 
 in the tent. The victim was a cur, who had in- 
 duced the wife to comply with his wishes by threat- 
 ening to tell the husband who her real lover was. 
 Another very respectable man is presented as com- 
 mitting murder because it was the proper thing 
 to do, the circumstances being such as to make 
 sympathy with the murdered man almost impossi- 
 ble. 
 
 Without more illustrations multitudes of 
 which will occur to every one we find educated? 
 sensible, refined people constantly exhibited in 
 novels as committing crimes of violence from al- 
 leged moral motives, superior to the law. Ideal 
 justice, of which they are the ministers, takes away 
 the guilt and removes the stigma. That such 
 arguments as are used to support deeds of per- 
 sonal revenge are sophistical is clear enough to a 
 well-balanced mind. Lynch law even is more jus- 
 tifiable, for that is a social, not an individual, act. 
 That people do entertain sentiments approving of 
 the " cheap justice of the shot-gun " is unfortu- 
 nately true. All the more dangerous, then, is the 
 influence of that fictitious literature which pict-
 
 l68 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ures deeds of murderous criminality as something 
 likely to happen naturally in the life of the ordi- 
 nary civilized human being. Such literature may 
 not incite the reader to indulge in homicide him- 
 self, but it very likely will cause him to vote for 
 acquittal the next time he sits on a jury trying a 
 man who has committed murder from " high mo- 
 tives." 
 
 Where there is a strong reaction in the reader's 
 mind, as he peruses a tale of the character we are 
 considering, little harm is done. Then he con- 
 demns the book. He is disposed to think it in- 
 ferior as a work of art, his moral perceptions dom- 
 inating. But if he reads more of the same sort, 
 his moral feeling is weakened. If the most of the 
 stories he reads are of similar nature, he will come 
 to enjoy them, and the ultimate effect upon him 
 will be precisely that of bad company, influencing 
 less or more, according to his strength or weak- 
 ness of character. The youth or the man of low 
 intelligence, who is unable to weigh arguments, is 
 of course likely to be injured most. There can 
 be no doubt that " dime novels " and exciting 
 tales of bloody adventure generally are among 
 the causes of crimes of violence. These, indeed, 
 are of the lowest hell. Yet their superiors have 
 much for which they are answerable. 
 
 If, now, we proceed to consider the morality of 
 minute descriptions of vice and crime, we shall 
 find, I apprehend, that the " naturalists " have at
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 169 
 
 last the advantage of a good argument. They 
 can say with much truth, that if vice is to be 
 revealed in a story it should be exactly and ac- 
 curately presented ; the cancer should be shown 
 with all its roots ; that then its hatefulness would 
 be a powerful deterrent. Still, omitting the sex- 
 ual, naturalistic accounts of the horrible nature 
 of evil dispositions and deeds certainly will not 
 be likely to allure. The real objection to details 
 of vice is an aesthetic rather than a moral one. 
 They are so repulsive that they destroy the artistic 
 effect. It is difficult to understand how Dosto- 
 yevsky's " Crime and Punishment," for example, 
 can have aught but a moral effect ; yet the work 
 is by no means pleasant reading. The same thing 
 is true of many of the war scenes in ' Tolstoi's 
 " War and Peace." But it is the very minuteness 
 of analysis which takes away the chance of evil 
 effect. 
 
 If the hideousness of crime stands forth sali- 
 ently, the inevitable wretchedness of the perpetra- 
 tor and the utter wreck of his energies and hopes 
 for life are made plain, the whole current of the 
 reader's mind is set against evil courses. Such is the 
 net result of works like the masterpieces of Balzac 
 " Pere Goriot," " Eugenie Grandet," " Csar Bir- 
 otteau," " Le Peau de Chagrin." George Eliot, no 
 doubt, thought the first of these " hateful," because 
 it presented such an unpleasant picture of human 
 character. She would not have called it an im-
 
 170 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 moral book. The moral of " Le Peau de Chagrin " 
 is obvious and impressive. The portrayals by 
 Dickens of besotted vice and brutal wickedness 
 can have no tendency to make people adopt as 
 models of character such vile specimens of human- 
 ity as he sets before his readers. No one reading 
 a story like Mrs. Anne Sheldon Coombs's " A 
 Game of Chance " would ever thereby become en- 
 amoured of the stock-speculation so commonly 
 destructive in modern life. We must conclude, 
 therefore, that if a novel deal with evil, realistic 
 or naturalistic description is in general not to be 
 regarded as objectionable on the score of vicious 
 tendency. It may be unpleasant and have the 
 depressing effect that the observation of depravity 
 has always upon the virtuous mind ; on this point 
 we shall have more to say later. But at all events 
 the book is not otherwise immoral by reason of 
 these things. 
 
 It must be allowed, however, that the foregoing 
 remarks need qualification by the exception which 
 we have all along made. Minute accounts of the 
 workings of the sexual passion are to be placed 
 in a somewhat different category. We are thus 
 brought to a topic of great importance in the 
 philosophy of fiction, a subject which in recent 
 times is engaging the attention of writers and 
 readers more extensively than ever before, because 
 of the increasing boldness of masters of fiction- 
 writing in selecting and treating phases of human
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 171 
 
 experience not hitherto deemed fit for the nov- 
 elist's art. Teachers of morality are generally 
 appalled by this freedom, and condemnations of 
 literary licentiousness are everywhere heard. It 
 behooves us, then, to examine with some care this 
 phenomenon of literary production. 
 
 In Chapter IX. we remarked the fact that the 
 chief cause of interest in erotic description is the 
 stimulation of sexual appetite. This is the reason 
 why minute depictions of the course of sex-rela- 
 tions cannot be regarded in the same light, morally 
 speaking, as details of the working of vicious pas- 
 sion of a predatory nature. They tend to awaken, 
 develop, and intensify an organic appetite, the 
 means for gratifying which are everywhere found in 
 social life. If, then, such gratification be immoral 
 and dangerous, so are books which encourage it. 
 Gautier's " Mademoiselle de Maupin " is one of 
 the most beautiful and charming works of an ero- 
 tic character; but it seems useless for any one to 
 attempt to deny that the interest in that work 
 comes essentially from the excitation of sexual 
 feeling, more or less strong according to tempera- 
 ment and age. The delightful style, the many 
 scenes and descriptions of a highly artistic char- 
 acter, contribute to the general effect ; for, as we 
 have also observed in a former chapter, the aesthe- 
 tic and the sexual are closely related. In the par- 
 ticular work in question we have carnal amatory 
 passion idealized and made beautiful.
 
 172 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 Let us contrast with this " Justine" and " Juli- 
 ette " of the Marquis de Sade, a monomaniac in 
 sexual diabolisms. These books livres-a-clef 
 portray the appetite as leading to and finding its 
 satisfaction in the most horrible and abominable 
 cruelties. Intermixed with the narrative is a 
 quantity of sophistical philosophizing which could 
 only have come from a half-crazed brain. It is 
 difficult to see what there is in such narratives as 
 these to attract any but the most brutal natures. 
 One would hardly think that accounts of erotic 
 association with hellish circumstances, torture, and 
 the scenes of the slaughter-house, would incite any- 
 body to debauchery. Only abnormal beings would 
 derive any satisfaction from such accounts as are 
 found in " Justine " and " Juliette." We should 
 naturally call the books most outrageously im- 
 moral ; but there is room for questioning whether 
 their effect on character and conduct would be as 
 bad as that of " Mademoiselle de Maupin." I do 
 not wish to be understood as asserting that the 
 latter is a worse book than the former. I only 
 suggest the argument that Gautier's masterpiece 
 will endure in literature, while the horrid tales of 
 the Marquis de Sade never can, save for the inter- 
 est of the curious. If feeding this particular appe- 
 tite aesthetically is to be reprobated, I think we 
 must concede that much more nourishment in this 
 line is afforded by " Mademoiselle de Maupin " 
 than by " Justine." The one is to most people
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 173 
 
 aesthetically superb ; the other, aesthetically con- 
 sidered, is detestable. What shall we say as to 
 the morality ? 
 
 Those who wish to defend the erotic in novels 
 will be forced by the exigencies of fact and logic to 
 take a much bolder line of argument if they insist 
 upon their position. To say that "to the pure all 
 things are pure " will not meet the case. Some 
 cynic has parodied this expression by the assertion 
 that "to the pure* all things are nasty." No doubt 
 a virgin of forty-five will see or imagine salacious- 
 ness in a novel much quicker than a married 
 woman of thirty. Old bachelors, too, of ascetic 
 characters get very morbid in these matters. But 
 whatever the condition of the reader, it is foolish to 
 urge that a warmly colored, artistically presented 
 story of sex-affiliations will generally please merely 
 on account of its abstract beauty. Its beauty will 
 be heightened if not formed by erotic stimulation ; 
 very refined it may be, but still, after all, consti- 
 tuting the basis of appreciation. If this be so, the 
 artist who justifies " the nude in literature " will 
 have to take the ground that the excitation of the 
 sexual appetite is not so harmful as has been 
 claimed by ascetic moralists, and that its gratifica- 
 tion is, to a greater extent than has been allowed, 
 a matter of personal choice and right, instead of 
 social morality. No doubt the author who asserted 
 this would raise a hornet's nest about his ears ; 
 but it is much better to look into the matter pro-
 
 174 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 foundly rather than superficially. It is wiser to 
 present the question squarely and discuss it can- 
 didly than to put ourselves off with hypocrisies 
 and equivocations. This cant about reading erotic 
 books for the " style," the " moral lessons " from 
 the vagaries of vice, the " aesth'etic form," the 
 thousand-and-one reasons except the true one, is 
 very tiresome and disgusting. They are read by 
 the general public because they exhibit the move- 
 ments of a powerful human appetite which the 
 readers possess, which sensibly or insensibly enters 
 into the life and affects the conduct of those 
 readers, and which is pleasantly stimulated by 
 imagination and fictitious narrative. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter into the discussion 
 of what is and what is not true sexual morality 
 and immorality. I have considered these ques- 
 tions in another work, which I expect to publish. 
 But there are some things which should be said 
 apropos of the present topic, in order that we may 
 understand the meaning, and the bearings upon 
 literature, of the depiction of erotic sentiment. 
 The first of these is that the prevalence of such 
 portrayals is evidence of an increasing develop- 
 ment of sentiment in the direction indicated in 
 the last paragraph, and away from the old ascetic 
 standards. The latter required that no mention 
 should be made of the promptings of the sexual 
 passion, or its influence upon character, or even its 
 relations to love. Irregular sexual associations
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 175 
 
 must not be dwelt upon, and their mention in a 
 story is an objection to it. I personally know of 
 a certain novel having been rejected by a leading 
 publishing house in New York for the sole reason 
 (as stated) that it referred to one of its characters 
 keeping a mistress, the latter, however, not being 
 brought forward prominently in the work. This 
 is almost as bad as another instance within the 
 writer's knowledge, wherein an ancient fossil, who 
 for many years occupied the position of reader for 
 a large publishing firm, rejected a story as im- 
 moral because its opening chapter described a 
 party of young men at Delmonico's, who got hila- 
 rious over their cups before they left. Both of 
 these stories were discarded on the ascetic prin- 
 ciple that to recognize vice is to favor, and to 
 ignore is the best way of extinguishing it. I have 
 often wondered why intelligent routs should not 
 see the value to them of this policy of non-obser- 
 vation and silence. How much more to their ad- 
 vantage is it when society considers certain things 
 as impossible, and how much wider the field for 
 their operations. But we cannot avoid asking 
 people of ascetic proclivities some day to put on 
 spectacles of a little higher power, to look on the 
 world as it is, and then seriously ask themselves 
 the question whether knowledge may not after all 
 be better than innocence for the cause of sound 
 morals. 
 
 The Gallic freedom of expression in regard to
 
 176 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 matters of sex-relations is, no doubt, quite shock- 
 ing to many Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, the French 
 believe in recognizing sex-pleasures as legitimate 
 ends in themselves, to be enjoyed for their own 
 sake, and not merely as means to providential 
 purposes. Hence, these become, like all other 
 pleasures, the proper subjects of art. This also 
 is abominable to the Anglo-Saxon mind. But 
 it may well be doubted if the general family life 
 and morality of the French is any worse or on 
 any lower plane than the English. In London I 
 have noticed that a great many improper things 
 are done, even if nothing is said. In Paris, I am 
 inclined to the belief that fewer iniquities are com- 
 mitted, because such matters are talked and writ- 
 ten about. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied 
 that the Frenchman likes to have adopted as the 
 subject of literary fiction matters of occurrence 
 which the Englishman would not at present toler- 
 ate from an author writing in his own language. 
 With the former, therefore, the erotic in life is as 
 much entitled to artistic and literary treatment as 
 any other phase of human experience. 
 
 In such a condition of sentiment as that which 
 the French display, questions of morality are 
 greatly modified. If the state of innocence be 
 once gone, a very complete education is the best 
 thing. Hence a book like M. Alphonse Daudet's 
 " Sappho," in the midst of modern French litera- 
 ture, cannot properly be considered as other than
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 177 
 
 moral. The author's dedication to his sons when 
 they shall have reached the age of twenty years 
 indicates that he thought its educational influence 
 beneficial. His judgment is no doubt correct. 
 An American living in a country community, 
 where an Arcadian simplicity prevails, would prob- 
 ably not have the book in his house, because he 
 would esteem it dangerous. " Anna Karenina " 
 surely cannot be regarded as encouraging vice, nor 
 can Paul Lindau's " Lace," both of which deal 
 with fatal consequences of adultery. Yet these 
 last two are often condemned with the other, 
 and for like reasons the blessedness of igno- 
 rance. 
 
 American critics are complaining of the " Gallic 
 taint " as conspicuous in recent American fiction 
 to an alarming degree. A newspaper reviewer in 
 a leading journal observes that " the French fic- 
 tion of the day, with its ever-increasing morbid- 
 ness and impurity, and its diaphanous pretences 
 of art for art's sake, has been silently absorbed, 
 and with a growth in eagerness bespeaking deca- 
 dent ethical principles." It is quite true that a 
 number of tales of the erotic type have appeared 
 within a few years ; but it must not be forgotten 
 that the condition of American literature is such 
 that a few books of this kind will make more stir 
 than a multitude of a less unusual character. 
 Probably this is one chief reason why the authors 
 and publishers issue them. It is worth considera-
 
 178 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ble to have a book savagely condemned on this 
 score. Present sales are of more consequence 
 than posthumous fame. But it is not to be sup- 
 posed that the tastes of people in the United 
 States have changed radically in the last decade ; 
 and if in about that time nearly a million copies 
 of E. P. Roe's novels have found a market, we 
 need not be troubled for the present over the 
 spread of Gallic poison. Nevertheless, we might 
 as well make up our minds that American ficti- 
 tious literature has lost its virgin innocence. It 
 will be far better to conquer our squeamishness 
 and cheerfully allow that there is such a thing as 
 passion, that there are in the world irregularities 
 of sex-relations, and that all phases of human ex- 
 perience may supply material for the novelist, if his 
 treatment of them be decent. If public sentiment 
 allows more liberty, we shall have stronger and 
 better works of more ethical as well as aesthetic 
 value. For the sake of this we can afford to tol- 
 erate an occasional erotic genius, satisfied that in 
 the multitude of educational influences the harm 
 he can do is very limited. 
 
 Professor H. H. Boyesen, of Columbia College, 
 New York, performed a most excellent service in an 
 article published in the Forum, in which he discussed 
 the reason why in America we have as he consid- 
 ers no great novelists. He thinks it is because 
 stories are constructed on the theory that they must 
 be suited to the educational needs of the Young
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 179 
 
 Person, particularly the Young Girl. Hence, " a 
 weak lemonade mixture, harmless and mildly ex- 
 hilarating, adapted for the palate of ingtnues, is 
 poured out in a steady stream from our presses, 
 and we all drink it, and from patriotic motives 
 declare it to be good." There is sound truth in 
 these remarks, though the facts be not creditable 
 to us. The idea that a story-writer is bound to 
 write nothing but what every young person, how- 
 ever weak his or her moral fibre, may safely read, 
 would, if carried out, reduce fictitious writing to 
 the category of Sunday-school books. Not but 
 what a writer may devote himself entirely to 
 the latter class of composition. But to declare 
 that they are to exclude others or furnish the 
 standard of novel-writing is ridiculous. The 
 healthy growth of a literature depends upon its 
 freedom for expansion. Unwholesome books 
 there may be, but there are unwholesome people. 
 Of the two the latter are much worse, yet they 
 are in the world about us, and our children see 
 them and meet them without perceptible harm. 
 If we do our duty in educating we can create in 
 children a sound and healthy character based on 
 knowledge instead of ignorance. The " sheltered 
 life" theory as to both girls and boys is carried 
 altogether too far. Knowledge must come some 
 time ; better that it be acquired naturally and 
 accurately when it is sought rather than to have 
 formed in the mind a wrong " illusion " of life, as
 
 180 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 M. de Maupassant calls it, by a process of that 
 suppressio vert, which is to the young a suggestio 
 falsi. When, in the last case, the Young Person 
 becomes undeceived, when he does eat of the tree 
 of knowledge, the shock to him is very great, and 
 he is apt to lose all confidence both in learning 
 and in human character. The other is much the 
 better way. But, in any event, literature does not 
 exist solely for children and youth, nor is the 
 question of its morality or immorality to be settled 
 exclusively by reference to the effect on them. 
 Let their needs be considered, of course, but also 
 let it be considered that grown people have rights. 
 If milk be the proper food for babes, strong men 
 should not be deprived of meat because the babes 
 may sometimes get hold of it to their detriment. 
 
 One of the best discussions of this question of 
 " the nude in literature " is found in an article 
 published in the New York World* under that 
 title, and written by Mr. George Gary Eggleston. 
 I venture to quote a few sentences which, to my 
 mind, express exactly the true doctrine of this 
 difficult subject. He says : " The modern novelist 
 must deal with modern life. If his work is to be 
 of any value he must deal with it truthfully. It 
 is not permitted to him, if he be a true artist or 
 if his work is to have any value, to deal with one 
 side of it, ignoring the existence of the other. He 
 
 * December 15, 1889.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. igl 
 
 must recognize fact and state it. If he does so 
 with fidelity and with honest purpose, the result 
 is good and for good ; if he does so, as many 
 modern novelists have done, without fidelity, the 
 result must be evil in every case. 
 
 " Every fact of human life, every trait of human 
 character, every possibility of human conduct is 
 legitimate material for the use of the creative 
 literary artist, and every such fact, trait, and pos- 
 sibility may be wholesomely or evilly employed, 
 according as the purpose and method of its em- 
 ployment may determine. The trouble is that 
 both in the popular judgment and in what is 
 called ' literary criticism ' there is a constant fail- 
 ure to discriminate between wholesome and un- 
 wholesome methods, between legitimate and ille- 
 gitimate uses. 
 
 " It is not a question of legitimacy of materials ; 
 it is a question of the legitimacy of the uses made 
 of them. 
 
 " All truths are wholesome if wholesomely 
 treated, and if the art of fiction is not to fall into 
 utter decay, this principle must be recognized by 
 the critics and by the public. Failure to recognize 
 it is the chief cause of the prevalence and success 
 of evilly erotic fiction. It has the effect to silence 
 the voices of those who wish to deal wholesomely 
 with the unwholesome things of life, and turns
 
 1 82 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 over the most necessary materials of creative art 
 to those whose foul minds desire only to misapply 
 them. It is time for a sharp revision of judgments 
 in a matter that vitally concerns the future of 
 fictitious literature among us." 
 
 If we adopt Mr. Eggleston's canons for our 
 standard we shall not reject novels because a 
 mistress is introduced in them, nor because they 
 show violations of the seventh commandment, nor 
 because they recognize sexual passion in any 
 form. We shall not restrict the artist as to his 
 materials. But we shall look a little more closely 
 than the French do to the manner in which he 
 uses those materials. We shall have some regard 
 for growing youth, even if we do not allow that 
 literature exists only for them. We shall under- 
 stand that the tendency of too naturalistic de- 
 scriptions in this line is bad from a moral point of 
 view and must be curtailed. Carried too far, if it 
 cease to be immoral it may become aesthetically 
 offensive. Then, as Mr. Henry James says, in his 
 essay on Charles Baudelaire : " We are at a loss to 
 know whether the subject pretends to appeal to 
 our conscience or we were going to say to our 
 olfactories. ' Le Mai,' we exclaim, 'you do your- 
 self too much honor. This is not evil ; it is not 
 the wrong ; it is simply the nasty ! ' ' 
 
 For the novelist the difficulty would be, I sus- 
 pect, to refrain from realistic descriptions if he 
 once selects a topic which involves the effect of
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. ^3 
 
 sex-appetite on conduct. If he is truly an artist 
 it will be hard for him to content himself with 
 what he will inevitably consider inadequate por- 
 trayal. Even if he so frame his story as to pro- 
 duce on the whole a highly moral effect, there will 
 be scenes where he is tempted to paint vividly and 
 color warmly. It is very possible, then, that the 
 reader may feed his imagination on these scenes 
 and fail to receive the general lesson. We have 
 often noticed in public libraries portions of books 
 dealing with or calling attention to some form of 
 sexuality well-worn and soiled by finger-marks, 
 when the rest of the volumes, innocent of such 
 allusions, are left white and clean. Dr. O. W. 
 Holmes* refers to this fact in discussing " Madame 
 Bovary." He remarks of Flaubert's great novel : 
 "That it has a serious lesson there is no doubt, if 
 one will drink down to the bottom of the cup. 
 But the honey of sensuous description is spread 
 so deeply over the surface of the goblet that a 
 large proportion of its readers never think of its 
 holding anything else. All the phases of unhal- 
 lowed passion are described in full detail. This is 
 what the book is bought and read for by the great 
 majority of its purchasers, as all but simpletons 
 very well know." Yet there is much reason for 
 Mr. James's thought the first time he read it, 
 " that it would make the most useful of Sunday- 
 
 * Atlantic Monthly, April, 1890.
 
 1 84 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION, 
 
 school tracts." * Some of Swedenborg's works 
 that treat of the reproductive activities furnish 
 very good erotic reading ; yet the moral and re- 
 ligious purpose (and general effect, if properly 
 read) of these deliverances is perfectly evident, 
 and for this his works are highly valued and Swe- 
 denborg himself held in great reverence by many 
 moralists. 
 
 How, then, after these reflections, shall we an- 
 swer the question asked a few pages back as to 
 the morality of " Mademoiselle de Maupin " ? I 
 do not see how we can escape from the conclu- 
 sion that its effect on character and conduct is 
 naturally bad (and hence it is of immoral tend- 
 ency), if we believe that the gratification of the 
 sexual appetite is not to be considered a legitimate 
 pleasure, to be enjoyed and cultivated for its own 
 sake, irrespective of any particular ends or pur- 
 poses to be subserved thereby. 
 
 But even if it be thus estimated, there arises 
 also the question of temperance which must be 
 met, and we discover that those people who 
 would read such books with the most interest are 
 the very ones most likely to be injuriously affected 
 by the descriptions. On the other hand, it is to 
 be said that after character is formed on the basis 
 of chastity and continence, conduct would not be 
 influenced, and the only effect is that aesthetic 
 
 *" French Poets and Novelists."
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE, 185 
 
 pleasure which is connected with manifestations 
 of the sex-passion. Or, if the character be estab- 
 lished on the ideas of the sybarite and voluptu- 
 ary, it may be urged that the reader will be no 
 worse for the reading and that he has a right to 
 indulge his own tastes as he pleases, though his 
 preferences are not ours. On the whole, therefore, 
 we must conclude that, considered educationally, 
 " Mademoiselle de Maupin " is dangerous, the 
 more so on account of the beautiful style in 
 which it is written ; that otherwise it is good or 
 bad on the moral side according to whether we 
 believe in the ascetic or the epicurean view of the 
 pleasures of sex-relations. In the former case a 
 strong sentiment prevents us from allowing to 
 such pleasures a legitimate aesthetic existence, 
 denies that they may be made enjoyments for 
 their own sake, and considers that they should 
 be indulged only for race preservation. In the 
 latter case, the more refined and beautiful such 
 enjoyments be made to appear, the more they are 
 brought under the principles of aesthetic govern- 
 ment, the better. Associations of uncleanliness 
 should on that theory be eliminated, and nakedness 
 cease to be cause for shame, until those ideals 
 and sentiments of which we have evidence as 
 existing in Greece in the period of the fullest ar- 
 tistic development are again realized. Morality 
 in such case becomes a matter of temperance and 
 prudence, the obligations of which are imperative
 
 1 86 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 enough, to be sure, but rest on a different founda- 
 tion from those imposed by the ascetics. 
 
 For the sake of contrast let us look at a class of 
 novels of which Paul Heyse's " In Paradise " may 
 be taken as a type. This work does not deal in 
 sensuous description ; on the contrary, the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual side of life is always upper- 
 most. A little coterie of artists is brought together 
 and the work gives us their lives. They are 
 animated by the highest sentiments, the themes 
 and the tone of conversation are elevating, the 
 characters are by no means low. Yet at the end of 
 the work one of the ladies leaves her husband and 
 goes off to Italy to live with another man. This 
 is done after deliberation, with the full approval 
 of their friends, and they live contentedly and 
 happily forever afterward, no avenging Nemesis 
 disturbing their felicity. In taking this step they 
 have realized their ideals of life. Now, if we con- 
 sider that such a course is inculcated by the story 
 as a laudable one, the moral or lesson is against 
 morality, save under the doctrine that marriage is 
 not a binding contract, but may be dissolved at the 
 will of either party. It may be said there is no 
 such lesson taught. The author simply exhibits a 
 picture. Such things happen among respectable 
 people, who have this peculiar " illusion " of life. 
 But in a story the " illusion " is apt to be regarded 
 as typical of what is, or as an ideal of what ought 
 to be. A society is constructed wherein modes of
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 187 
 
 life like those indicated are proper and apparently 
 conduce to happiness. The influence exerted may 
 not be very evident, but it is subtle and insinuat- 
 ing. The reader asks himself : Since excellent 
 people do these things, why may not I ? Or, is 
 not the social condition here described, after all, 
 better than our own ? If the reading of the book 
 aroused the earnest and sincere desire to answer 
 thoroughly and completely such queries as these, 
 no harm would result. The difficulty is, however, 
 that few readers will be impelled to such a course. 
 The most will receive the impression and be insen- 
 sibly affected by it. They will adopt half-truths 
 as the whole ; they will generalize too broadly ; 
 the representation of this particular " illusion " 
 will prevent the formation of others ; they will 
 come to adopt it as their own and be content that 
 it become universal, not taking account of the 
 pains and penalties to individuals and to society. 
 The more nearly the reader identifies himself and 
 his social environment with that of the people in 
 the story who do wrong, the greater is the moral 
 danger. If these intellectual and delightful per- 
 sons, whose tastes and habits are so like mine and 
 those of my friends, get along so comfortably and 
 satisfactorily, are not my good friend, Mrs. Pious- 
 in-Church, and myself rather slow creatures if we 
 fail to go and do likewise ? We might as well take 
 advantage of what life affords. In so doing we 
 may even satisfy a long-felt soul-aspiration and
 
 1 88 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 come into a much fuller and more complete devel- 
 opment of our whole moral nature ! 
 
 Paul Heyse's elective affinity based on intellec- 
 tual tastes and sympathies is a fair example of 
 adultery according to German ideas. M. de Mau- 
 passant's " Bel-Ami " shows the French fashion 
 much more complicated and interlacing. In this 
 latter novel, the " highly intellectual " and the 
 " superior moral " do not appear. Still, the society 
 in which the dramatis persons move is a perfectly 
 respectable one on the surface. " Bel-Ami " cer- 
 tainly would not demoralize the same class of 
 minds that would be affected by " In Paradise," 
 nor would it operate in the same way. The former 
 would appeal to a Frenchman's interest but I 
 doubt much if a Frenchman is ever injured by 
 books of this sort. They do not form his society ; 
 they are rather a product of it ; and the masculine 
 mind at any rate has received its own impressions 
 from real experience as soon as it receives them 
 from books, if not before ; while young French 
 girls and women are under close surveillance as to 
 their reading. Nor is it easy to see how an Eng- 
 lishman or an American could be injured morally 
 by this book, for the " milieu " is entirely different 
 from his own. I should rather say, notwithstand- 
 ing the style and many delightful passages, that 
 the work is not so much immoral as " nasty." 
 
 The chief argument in favor of such a story as 
 " Bel-Ami " (taken as a whole) is the scientific.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 189 
 
 That, of course, makes for the justification of its 
 morality. Is it not well to have presented pictures 
 of society of all sorts as it is ? This is the con- 
 tention of the naturalistic writers. In a former 
 chapter we considered the danger to art con- 
 tained in their theory. In the moral question, 
 however, the " naturalists " hold a strong position. 
 If their novels were only read by the reflective and 
 earnest, they could not be opposed successfully on 
 the moral side ; but such is not the case, while the 
 special argument arising from the peculiar suscep- 
 tibility of the erotic appetite to be fed by descrip- 
 tion still remains in force. 
 
 Mr. W. L. Alden, in a magazine article,* 
 maintains that violations of the seventh command- 
 ment must necessarily enter largely into fictitious 
 literature because of the subjective, analytical 
 character of the modern novel. Stories for the 
 most part deal with social life. Into this love 
 enters to a prevailing degree, and all the passion 
 and the impulses connected with it must become 
 a theme for description. It is in departures from 
 the normal, the ordinary, that the incidents are 
 found which are requisite for interest. M. Daudet 
 also remarks : " Adultery with all its dangers, its 
 emotions, never fails to attract." f There is truth 
 in these observations. But if some characters in 
 a story commit adultery, it is pleasant to find 
 
 * The Galaxy. f " Thirty Years of Paris."
 
 190 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 some who do not and who would not if they had 
 a chance. There are such people in the world, 
 but we do not discover them in " Bel-Ami," unless, 
 perhaps, the very old people. Hence the justice 
 of Mr. Henry James's remark about this particular 
 story : " The world represented is too special, too 
 little inevitable, too much to take or leave as we 
 like a world in which every man is a cad and 
 every woman a harlot."* It seems a pity that a 
 man of so great literary genius should introduce 
 his readers to a company of such tiresome and 
 sickening characters. If there had been one person 
 of a different type, so as to exhibit a contrast, the 
 effect would have been incalculably better like 
 that produced by Vera and Correze, in Ouida's 
 " Moths," for example. 
 
 But we must be reasonable about these matters. 
 It is to be regretted that there exists in America 
 a provincial prudery for which the birch-rod is the 
 only appropriate medicine. With people of this 
 ilk, a single expression is quite sufficient to kill a 
 novel in their estimation ; much more a situation 
 which develops illicit associations. They are rep- 
 resented by the ancient fossil to whom I made 
 reference a few pages back, who objected to an ac- 
 count of young men getting drunk at Delmonico's. 
 They are also to be found, it seems, among the 
 governors of young ladies' seminaries, like those of 
 
 * " Partial Portraits."
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 191 
 
 Wellesley College, who condemned Dr. Edward 
 Eggleston's " Roxy " as not suitable for their 
 library. Now, people who would reject "Roxy" 
 would have spat upon and buffeted Jesus of Naz- 
 areth ; while the thieves who were crucified with 
 him would be too good company for them. So 
 we often observe both men and women shudder- 
 ing with horror at the discussion of current French 
 novels, or at finding these stories on the table of a 
 friend. It is the same sort we discover draping 
 nude statues, as at the Detroit Museum. And 
 again in journalism we notice them (I think with 
 more affectation than sincerity), condemning, for 
 instance, a book like the Marquise Lanza's " Mod- 
 ern Marriage," because, though the tendency of the 
 work is moral and its execution highly artistic, it 
 contains an account of a married woman visiting 
 the apartments of her lover. Then they abuse the 
 author because she dedicated such a tale to her 
 young sons ! So, it will be remembered, Charlotte 
 Bronte's " Jane Eyre " was pronounced too im- 
 moral to be ranked as decent literature ; George 
 Eliot's "Adam Bede" was characterized as the 
 " vile outpourings of a lewd woman's mind " ; and 
 Mrs. Browning's " Aurora Leigh " was described 
 as the "hysterical indecencies of an erotic mind." 
 People possessed with sentiments so extreme can- 
 not be argued with. They can be taught nothing. 
 They can sometimes be whipped into silence, but 
 that is all. Those, however, who, though better
 
 1 92 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 than they, are yet inclined to be more respectful 
 to their ideas and are forming their own, would do 
 well to study the many noble works which, either 
 by criticism of individuals or by general discus- 
 sion, profoundly deal with art in general and 
 literary art in particular. Then the eye will 
 see more clearly and the mind apprehend more 
 readily. The proper universality of art will be 
 understood, and the remarks of Mr. Henry James 
 to the young novelist will be appreciated as em- 
 bracing the best and profoundest philosophy: 
 "All life belongs to you, and don't listen either 
 to those who would shut you up in corners of it 
 and tell you that it is only here and there that art 
 inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that 
 this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of 
 life altogether, breathing a superfine air, and turn- 
 ing away her head from the truth of things. There 
 is no impression of life, no manner of seeing it and 
 feeling it, to which the plan of the novelist may 
 not offer a place." * Then, on the special question 
 of morality and immorality, there is an excellent 
 thought contained in the following language of R. 
 Buchanan :f "An immoral subject, treated insin- 
 cerely, leaves an immoral effect on those natures 
 weak enough to be influenced by it at all. The 
 same subject, treated with the power of genius 
 and the delicacy of art, delights and exalts us. In 
 
 * " The Art of Fiction." f Fortnightly Review, vol. vi. , 1866.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 193 
 
 the pure white light of the author's sincerity and 
 the delicate tints of literary loveliness, the im- 
 moral point just shows distinctly enough to im- 
 press purely, without paining." 
 
 Assuming that proper educational precautions 
 are taken as to immature minds, perhaps the peo- 
 ple who are most injured by books of evil tenden- 
 cies are their authors. These last we have not 
 been particularly considering, but they ought to 
 be considered. We have insisted all along that 
 the author cannot be separated from his work, 
 and that the revelation therein of the author's 
 mind pervades the aesthetic impression made upon 
 the beholder by the work itself. His greatness or 
 littleness, as therein disclosed, enters largely into 
 the estimate of his production. Readers want to 
 see the writer's ideals and then observe how and 
 upon what he exercises his creative powers. Into 
 his ideal they desire to enter and to go sympa- 
 thetically with the author on his way, assisting in 
 the construction, participating in the creation. 
 They will demand good company, not bad, and 
 their judgment of the author's personality will be 
 formed by the expression of thought and feeling 
 in the language before them. 
 
 These suggestions lead up to a much broader 
 question, into which merge all these queries re- 
 specting morality and art which we have been dis- 
 cussing perhaps at too great a length. This is 
 the general treatment of evil and good with respect 
 13
 
 194 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 to each other in the plan of a story. The settle- 
 ment of this question really disposes of most of 
 the others, which are subordinate. 
 
 At the present writing I have before me two 
 newspaper articles, one entitled " The Literature 
 of Discontent," * the other a criticism of M. Paul 
 Bourget's " Mensonges."f Two years and more 
 apart, the burden of their thought is the same. 
 They both connect, as if necessarily, erotic litera- 
 ture and what the first-named writer has styled 
 that of discontent. They both lament the prevail- 
 ing pessimistic character of fiction. The first, 
 speaking of modern novelists, says : " There is an 
 increasing tendency to regard the earth as a prison- 
 house, and existence, in the words of Edgar Saltus, 
 as ' an immense, an unnecessary affliction ' until 
 the only wise course seems to be to find the edge 
 of the world and jump off into space. 
 
 " With one class of thinkers the influence of the 
 age produces a curious kind of paralysis ; and of 
 this class Amiel, whose journal is one of the sad- 
 dest books of our time, stands as the type. 
 
 "The gloom of the materialistic writers is of 
 another nature ; it is the revulsion of feeling that 
 follows a saturnalia disgust after debauch. De- 
 claring that man has no to-morrow, they set to work 
 
 * New York Star, February, 1890. 
 
 f New York Tribune, November 27, 1887.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 195 
 
 in their own fashion to make the most of to-day. 
 Ignoring everything in human nature that aspires, 
 they worship the beast in man the ' man-swine ' 
 wallowing in the mire. 
 
 " Everywhere they show us ' sense-quenching 
 soul.' They turn their eyes from the rainbow 
 vision written across the skies to the filth of the 
 pig-sty, and say : ' This is all of life.' The strug- 
 gle for existence, as represented by them, is not 
 like the battling of wild beasts, which has at least 
 the savage nobility of strength, but rather like the 
 horrible writhing and rending of the lowest forms 
 of life, seen through the microscope. In common 
 consistency, these wise men should be happy; yet 
 their to-day, for all its clatter, is not even merry. 
 Pleasures and dissipations and all of the ingenu- 
 ities of vice outworn, at last we find them sitting, 
 grim and gray, amid the debris of the feast, mut- 
 tering complaints against the emptiness and hol- 
 lowness of life." 
 
 The other writer observes : " The modern psy- 
 chologic novelist believes in nothing but the per- 
 sistence of evil. There is neither faith nor virtue 
 in man or woman for him. Everything is for the 
 worst in the worst possible world. The heavens 
 are brass and the earth iron. What the old profli- 
 gate, Jean de Meung, wrote about women in the 
 fourteenth century is reproduced, only in a more 
 polished form, at the close of the nineteenth. It 
 is the credo of the French romancer, whether
 
 I9 6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 psychologist or realist. And what is the goal to 
 which all this tends ? There is no thought of a 
 higher life. There is no feeling after spiritual de- 
 velopment. The conception of severe suffering 
 experienced on the fleshly plane never suggests 
 the ascent of the soul to a loftier eminence and a 
 purer atmosphere." 
 
 He then expresses the following conclusions: 
 "Surely this is a literature alike depressing and 
 demoralizing, a literature in which false psychol- 
 ogy masquerades in company with false morals 
 and false art ; a literature unfaithful to the foun- 
 dation principles of art, in fact, since it turns its 
 back at once upon the beautiful and the true." 
 
 While there is danger of applying the above 
 remarks to a greater number of books and authors 
 than the facts warrant, there is no doubt that they 
 properly characterize the color and tone of many 
 modern novels. But though the erotic and the 
 pessimistic are frequently associated, as in M. 
 Bourget's works, the latter is found without the 
 former, as in Turgenieff s stories, and the former 
 without the latter, as in " Mademoiselle de Mau- 
 pin." Any philosophy which lays great stress 
 on seizing the enjoyments of to-day implies want 
 of faith in the to-morrow. Moreover, the excess 
 apt to follow when one acts on these ideas pro- 
 duces an exhaustion which issues in hopelessness 
 and despair. But such despair may come from 
 other reasons. The pessimism of the Russian
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 197 
 
 writers arises, doubtless, from the political and 
 social conditions of their country. Balzac cer- 
 tainly does not exhibit a very hopeful or exhilar- 
 ating prospect of human life, unless, perhaps, when 
 he gets to "Louis Lambert" and " Seraphita ; " 
 but he shows the workings of all sorts of passions 
 besides the erotic. M. de Maupassant, on the 
 other hand, deals almost wholly, one might even 
 say, with sexual relations, and he is also a pessi- 
 mist. The erotic mania is, however, not the sole 
 cause of pessimism, which may develop from the 
 indulgence of strong promptings of appetite, from 
 the sense of one's inability to realize ideals, from 
 failure of effort, and from oppressive conditions 
 of life of any sort. 
 
 It is clear enough that oftentimes the feeling of 
 the omnipresence and omnipotence of evil pos- 
 sesses the human mind, and with many people it 
 is always the case that " the heavens are brass and 
 the earth iron." But how should the artist look 
 upon these conditions, and what are his relations 
 to them ? For one, I am strongly of the opinion 
 expressed in the criticism of "Mensonges" just 
 quoted, that the pessimistic plan in a novel is 
 " unfaithful to the foundation principles of art, 
 . . . since it turns its back at once upon the 
 beautiful and the true." The field of art is not 
 restricted to what is, but the whole region of the 
 possible is opened up to the artist. It is for him 
 to create, and those who are to look upon his
 
 193 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 work will always expect his creation to be some- 
 thing which they can appreciate and enjoy as 
 satisfying their own ideals of improvement on 
 present conditions. The great majority of read- 
 ers of a novel, those who form public opinion at 
 least, are bound to say: Since life is full of care 
 and trouble, and since there is a possible world 
 better than what we experience, into which you, 
 the artist, if you be an artist, may enter; intro- 
 duce us within, and make for us a society that 
 shall be a refreshing contrast to that of which we 
 are a part. Give us examples of the best in hu- 
 man nature, not the worst. If our atmosphere be 
 murky with evil, lift us up into a clearer air, which 
 shall invigorate us as we breathe it, making .us 
 more buoyant and hopeful. What use have we 
 for books which merely recall the sordid and tire- 
 some struggle into which we are forced in our 
 business or social activity? We want to be taken 
 away from that to behold something charming, 
 delightful, and exhilarating ! 
 
 These sentiments are not only natural, but they 
 are much more universal than novel-writers seem 
 to suppose. Moreover, they express a correct 
 idea of art. A story which " leaves a bad taste in 
 the mouth," a tale which wearies and depresses, 
 is deficient on the artistic side. It is a work in 
 which an essential principle of art is ignored or 
 violated namely, the minimizing of the disagree- 
 able. If, however, that principle be observed, it
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 199 
 
 will atone for a great many artistic defects. E. P. 
 Roe saw this, and that is one secret of the success 
 of his writings. He says, in a review article : * 
 " The elements of light and hopefulness are essen- 
 tial to a living novel. There may be plenty of 
 tragedy, but this should be shadow in the picture; 
 and no true, pleasing picture can be painted in 
 black or in lurid reds alone. A story cannot hold 
 a large place among the living which leaves an 
 unredeemed impression of horror or even of de- 
 spondency." " If it leaves them (the readers) more 
 relaxed morally, more disheartened and hopeless, 
 no art can save the story in their estimation." 
 To such testimony let me add a word from Pro- 
 fessor Boyesen : f " Art can engage in no better 
 pursuit than to stimulate noble and healthful 
 thought on all matters of human concern, and 
 thereby clear the prejudiced mind and raise the 
 average of human happiness." 
 
 The novel must revivify. It must quicken like 
 the sunlight. It must rejoice one like the cool, 
 delicious breeze. It must inspire like the face and 
 conversation of an admirable friend. It must lead 
 us out from aridity into green pastures. If it 
 makes us sorrowful, it must also give us solace to 
 relieve our suffering. If it exhibit terrible things, 
 it must at the same time make our souls strong 
 to bear them, and fill us with the courage to resist 
 
 * The Forum. f Ibid.
 
 200 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 evil. Unless it accomplish these results, it is not 
 a work of the best art. " Art has for its highest 
 function to satisfy our emotions by an ideal pre- 
 sentment of life." * 
 
 But once more comes forward our scientific ad- 
 vocate, who reminds us of the advantages of a 
 knowledge of evil as well as of good. We must 
 treat him with respect, for he has a considerable 
 power of argument on his side. Yet it seems to 
 me he cannot overcome our contention that science 
 in the novel is not good enough science, and tends 
 to spoil art. It is, however, true that we are not 
 able to obtain accurate pictures of individual char- 
 acter and social conditions anywhere save in fiction. 
 M. Zola's works have a scientific value. It is not 
 to be regretted that they exist. The difficulty is, 
 being successful, they establish a fashion in litera- 
 ture which is pernicious. Every tyro in fiction- 
 writing thinks he must imitate them. Now, if all 
 story-writers were Zolas, the art of fiction would 
 straightway perish. Everything runs to extremes ; 
 to regulate and balance is hard. If once we get 
 into the way of thinking that the study of social 
 facts means the unpleasant ones, that analysis of 
 character means only hunting for the sensual, the 
 ignoble, and the pessimistic, we shall be losing the 
 best things of life, which lie all around us if we 
 would only observe and use them. We shall, in- 
 
 * James Sully, The Forum, August, 1890.
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 20 1 
 
 deed, be turning our backs on the beautiful and 
 the true. 
 
 It is greatly to be feared that many of those 
 who make use of scientific claims as justification 
 for " naturalistic " writing are not sincere. They 
 are glad of an excuse to dwell on subjects they 
 like to contemplate, but which would be eschewed 
 by people of better taste. If this be slanderous, 
 it may at least be said that they have very super- 
 ficial ideas of what science is. They do not pur- 
 sue the true scientific methods with any thorough- 
 ness. This was remarked in Chapter VI., and this 
 I must again and here impress. They do not 
 disclose the light side, which exists just as truly 
 as the dark. They omit redeeming features ; 
 they do not recognize the healthy forces, but 
 only the disease-producing. In painting a picture 
 of social life they use only the lurid reds and the 
 dark colors. If we may not bring a like charge 
 against all the " naturalists," such is the prevailing 
 tendency of many of them. They do not give a 
 scientific account, because they do not show evil 
 and good in society, or the individual, in their true 
 relations. They never find the soul of goodness 
 in things evil. They look upon the aspect of dis- 
 solution rather than on that of evolution. Their 
 work is scientifically imperfect. The nature of 
 their task is such that they must use their selec- 
 tive faculties. They must form a plan and adapt 
 materials to it. When this is done under a false
 
 202 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION'. 
 
 ideal, which ignores the governing principles of 
 art, there results a composition which is neither 
 one thing nor the other ; satisfying neither the 
 scientific nor the aesthetic sentiments. 
 
 The only true theory of the novel is that which 
 places the artistic foremost. But the truly great 
 artist is he who has the noblest and best ideals. 
 These can alone exist in a mind broad and pro- 
 found ; in a character loving truth, having a ful- 
 ness of moral sentiment, possessing a tender sym- 
 pathy with human wants, and an unquenchable 
 faith in the eternal and immortal not indeed as 
 defined by formulas and creeds, but as an ever- 
 living, inexhaustible source of creative power, in 
 the exercise of which man by labor and aspiration 
 may participate. Then over and beyond the dis- 
 mal prospect of the world's woe rises always the 
 vision of the heavens we would construct, and 
 which, when we lift up our eyes to their glories, 
 draw us unto them. It is in the presence of a soul 
 forever seeing such visions that we behold the 
 great artist. When in the Medicean chapel we 
 gaze upon the four " ineffable figures " that sym- 
 bolize together the weariness and the hope of hu- 
 manity, the sleep and the resurrection, the dawn 
 following the darkness, we stand in awe, thinking 
 not of the incompleteness of the work. Realism 
 it is, but it is " transfigured realism " ; and we go 
 forth admiring and fearing, knowing that we have 
 been face to face with the work of sublime creative
 
 ART, MORALS, AND SCIENCE. 203 
 
 genius, understanding that it is such because it 
 takes hold of the imperishable, links our souls to 
 the divine, and speaks to us with that voice of 
 power whose utterances, as Sophocles says, " are 
 not of to-day, nor of yesterday, and no man can 
 tell when they came." * 
 
 He who would become a novelist, therefore, 
 should understand that when he has made himself 
 great enough and good enough, he will write good 
 novels. He will have a message to communicate 
 to his fellows, and that may be through a very 
 simple plan and the use of very commonplace 
 materials. But in his hands they will, perchance, 
 not be commonplace. He will not be troubled 
 over questions of realism or romanticism, nor 
 need he concern himself much about morality or 
 immorality ; he will be moral despite himself. It 
 will matter little whether or not he introduce 
 murderers or mistresses. He can create Hydes 
 as well as Jekylls. He will have the freedom of a 
 clear head and a sound heart. Says Arrat : 
 " Une oeuvre vraiment belle, en somme, est une 
 oeuvre SAINE." f But if he would preserve his 
 liberty, he must not forget that his readers ex- 
 pect to be cheered, inspired, and improved by his 
 books. As Mr. Sully says : He must give the 
 predominant place to "what is lovely and of good 
 report ; the aspects of character and experience 
 
 * " Antigone " : 456. 
 
 f " In fine, a work truly beautiful is a healthy work."
 
 204 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 which gladden the imagination, and by gladdening 
 it, inspire hope and faith." * 
 
 We may assert, in the language of M. David- 
 Sauvageot,f that pessimism is " un dtsordre artis- 
 tique dont la cause est assez souvent un dtsordre 
 moral ; " and we may be quite sure that the poet's 
 words express true philosophy : 
 
 ' That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters, 
 That dote upon each other, friends to man, 
 Living together under the same roof, 
 And never can be sundered without tears." J 
 
 * The Forum, August, 1890. 
 
 \ " Le Realisme et le Naturalisme," etc. " An artistic disorder 
 of which the cause is too frequently a moral disease." 
 J Tennyson.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 IT would be presumptuous for me to lay down 
 law to the masters of fiction-writing with regard 
 to the practice of their own art. Many of these 
 writers have given the world theories as well as 
 examples of how, in their judgment, novels should 
 be constructed. Since I have never entered into 
 this field of literary composition, it would no doubt 
 be just, in case I should attempt to give directions, 
 if some experienced writer should rebuke me as 
 Napoleon did the too eager youth at Jena : " Wait 
 till you have commanded in twenty pitched bat- 
 tles before you presume to offer advice." It prob- 
 ably would not be necessary for me to write twenty 
 novels in order to entitle me to express an opinion 
 as to what sort of construction is likely to please 
 a reader. If reading novels, however, will com- 
 pensate for failing to write them, in affording 
 knowledge which suffices for the purposes of crit- 
 ical suggestion, I can probably qualify. But I 
 shall certainly be as modest as my nature will 
 allow in treating the special topic at the head of 
 this chapter. I shall only venture to make a few
 
 206 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 desultory remarks which occur to me as a proper 
 supplement to what has been already advanced in 
 the preceding pages. 
 
 In the first place, it seems quite evident that the 
 short-story is likely to become increasingly more 
 favored by the reading public. A number of 
 causes combine to produce this result. People 
 in active business who like to read have not the 
 time for anything which requires a long sitting. 
 If the story reaches beyond the limit, there is 
 no telling when the next opportunity will occur ; 
 the thread of connection is broken, the interest 
 is abated, and a feeling of dissatisfaction ensues, 
 making the reader reluctant to take up a book 
 which will need for its perusal more than one 
 session. These difficulties present themselves in 
 their extreme form in the serial, that abomination 
 of magazine literature. Since such productions 
 appear, they are doubtless acceptable to some, or 
 the editors would stop them. The fact, however, 
 that a serial story can be endured makes us won- 
 der what sort of people there are in this world of 
 ours, and gives one a very profound impression of 
 the infinite and amazing variety exemplified in the 
 development of the human mind. The English 
 three-volume custom is another outrage on read- 
 ers. Still, such novels are read mostly by those 
 who have been educated down to them ; and men 
 can be trained to endure anything, and say they 
 like it, too.
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 207 
 
 Not only is there lack of time to read, but there 
 is less time to read novels, than formerly. By this 
 I mean that the multiplication of books, periodi- 
 cals, and newspapers has produced a great increase 
 of works in all departments of literature. The 
 opportunities exist for a wider range in the 
 reader's choice as to what he shall spend his time 
 upon. News, travels, essays, history, science, art 
 all are afforded, to him in great abundance. And 
 not only is the quantity of works in these depart- 
 ments increasing, but the quality is improving. A 
 higher cultivation demands that all such books be 
 made interesting. The artistic form is necessitated 
 more and more in all literary productions. Hence 
 we have science popularized, essays made enter- 
 taining, and even philosophy made readable but 
 on this last topic I prefer not to dwell ! The nov- 
 elist of the present day has, then, no monopoly 
 in the business of furnishing interesting reading. 
 If, in the delusion that he has, he recklessly ex- 
 pands his works, as members of his guild did not 
 hesitate to do fifty years ago, he will soon come to 
 be regarded as a nuisance and find none so poor 
 as to do him reverence. These millennial days of 
 public opinion, it must be confessed, have not yet 
 arrived, but the early dawn is visible at any rate, 
 and story-writers should be wise in time. Even if 
 the signs are wrong, and it is only the false dawn, 
 the real one is sure to follow. 
 
 From the same considerations, it further ap-
 
 208 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 pears that a diminished length of the story is not 
 all that is required. Mr. Brander Matthews * 
 urges that there is a distinct difference between 
 the short-story and the story which is merely 
 short. The chief requisites of the former " are 
 compression, originality, ingenuity, and now and 
 again a touch of fantasy." This is to say, after 
 all, that people, in their gratitude to an author 
 for making his story short, will not think it good 
 solely because it is not so long as it might have 
 been. It must, in addition, be striking and inter- 
 esting. It must be well made. Mr. Matthews 
 admits that the " short-story and the sketch, the 
 novel and the romance melt and merge one into 
 the other, and no man may mete the boundaries 
 of each, though their extremes lie far apart." 
 We may not go so far as to say that the short- 
 story, as Mr. Matthews defines it, will eventually 
 supersede the other varieties of fiction composi- 
 tion, but we may assert that the reading public 
 will more and more require stories which are 
 short, and among these the short-story will always 
 find favor. If, however, novels proper be written, 
 we cannot dispense with that same " compression, 
 originality, and ingenuity" which are necessary for 
 the short-story. 
 
 In this view, two modern writers may, perhaps, 
 be selected as models for construction, so far as 
 
 * " Philosophy of the Short-Story."
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 209 
 
 form and method are concerned, leaving out sub- 
 ject-matter and idiosyncrasies of style. These 
 are Turgnieff and M. Guy de Maupassant. In 
 neither of these is there anything superfluous. (I 
 do not speak of some of the earlier tales of the 
 last-named, every word of which, including the 
 title, is superfluous.) But the unity of the com- 
 position in most of their stories is clear and satis- 
 fying. The art of compression they have learned 
 perfectly. He would be of a strange mental 
 nature who would be bored by either. Their 
 tales present each a picture, with well-coordinated 
 and organically related parts. Hence, their stories 
 hold the attention of the reader concentrated, 
 and make the impression upon him of a distinct 
 and finished work of art. Their excellence in this 
 respect is very plainly seen by a contrast with 
 Tolstoi, for example, in some of his productions. 
 " Anna Karnina " is a good one to take. , This is 
 really two novels in one. It is a history of the 
 Karenin family and of the Levin family. To 
 give my own experience with the book : I discov- 
 ered this fact early in the reading, and found that, 
 by omitting the chapters pertaining chiefly to the 
 Levins, I could follow the thread of the Karenin 
 fortunes to the end without any hiatus being ob- 
 servable. This I did, and then returned to read 
 the Levin story. Of course the contrasts between 
 the characters and the lives of the two families 
 are instructive, but the incidents are not so inter- 
 14
 
 210 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 woven as to form a single, unified work of art. 
 In the progress of reading, one frequently feels 
 like saying, as Rudyard Kipling does, when in his 
 tales he strikes upon some incident foreign to his 
 immediate purpose of narration, " But that is 
 another story ; " and wishing that the author had 
 postponed telling it till another time. Precisely 
 the same fault is found in Mr. Henry James's 
 " Tragic Music," and it often occurs in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 The lack of simplicity in the plan of a novel is 
 a great drawback to its perfection. In former 
 times it seems as if complexity of incident and a 
 succession of startling events were deemed abso- 
 lutely essential to interest. This was a part of 
 the philosophy of the romanticists. It was not so 
 long ago that George Sand was in vogue. Admi- 
 rable as she is in many respects, after acquaintance 
 with such writers as Turgnieff and M. de Mau- 
 passant, what ill-jointed, roughly constructed, half- 
 done productions her stories appear to be ! A tale 
 of Turgenieff is a perfect marble statue ; a story 
 of George Sand, by comparison, a manikin of 
 papier mackt ! The readers of " Consuelo " will 
 remember how the author racked their nerves, 
 until they were fairly in agony, with an intermi- 
 nable series of adventures, enough for a dozen 
 novels. Then, not content with this, she writes a 
 sequel to the tale the " Countess of Rudolstadt." 
 From such novel-writers, good Lord, deliver us !
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 211 
 
 The principle of unity and simplicity forbids 
 diffuseness in description of scenes, of places, or 
 of persons. Ouida's " In Maremma " Mr. Edgar 
 Fawcett calls "a tale of matchless grace and 
 sweetness." So it is ; but it would have been 
 infinitely better if the author had spared us the 
 endless and tiresome repetition of description of 
 " the sultry heavens," " the torpid sea," " the gray 
 sky parched with mists of intense heat," " the 
 fever fog," and " the glaring sands." Let the 
 reader study Charles Reade's " Cloister and the 
 Hearth," and note the difference. The fault of 
 long narrative accounts of characters instead of 
 making them reveal themselves by speech and 
 action is not now very common among writers 
 of reputation ; but when it occurs it is a serious 
 blemish, because, if the work were well done, it is 
 quite unnecessary and is at best a clumsy method 
 of portrayal. 
 
 Again, the artistic effect is much impaired by 
 the introduction of homilies, disquisitions, argu- 
 ments, and speculations, not required by the plan 
 of work. Bulwer's " Strange Story " has many 
 pages of this sort of digression which is exceed- 
 ingly injurious to the force of the tale. He even 
 argues in foot-notes for the probability of what he 
 states in the text. What a refreshing contrast to 
 this is Mr. Stevenson's " Jekyll and Hyde," a 
 most admirably constructed story, in which artistic 
 requirements are perfectly fulfilled and the readers
 
 212 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 feel no lack of information or explanation as to 
 the subject-matter. A still worse kind of perver- 
 sion of the novel occurs where the moralizing and 
 philosophizing are the main thing, the story being 
 subordinated thereto. Balzac's " Seraphita " is an 
 example in point, though it must be confessed he 
 has clothed his Swedenborgian philosophy with 
 beautiful drapery. Yet the long expositions of 
 Swedenborg, and commentaries on his ideas, are 
 tiresome and quite unnecessary. So in Tolstoi's 
 " Kreutzer Sonata," one reads with the prevailing 
 consciousness that the murder of the wife is only 
 a device to hold the attention while the author 
 throws at you his nauseating moralizing. Even 
 M. de Maupassant has done this same thing, once 
 at least, in " L'Inutile BeauteV' where he gives one 
 chapter of digression, for the sake of philosophiz- 
 ing on sexual relations ; but he is short and concise, 
 and under such conditions a writer may sometimes 
 be forgiven for the fault of which I have been 
 speaking. In fine, we must agree with Seftor 
 Val6ra, when he exclaims in the preface of " Pe- 
 pita Ximenez " : "I think it in very bad taste, 
 always impertinent, and often pedantic, to attempt 
 to prove theses by writing stories. For such a 
 purpose dissertations or books purely and severely 
 didactic should be written." 
 
 In the light of the foregoing considerations we 
 may enunciate as the first rule of fiction construc- 
 tion :
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 213 
 
 1 . Form a plan of something distinct and definite 
 to be done. 
 
 To this I should add two more rules, namely : 
 
 2. Do that and nothing else in each case. 
 
 3. Do it well. 
 
 If these rules be very general, they are not, I ' 
 trust, meaningless from vagueness. The first and 
 second have perhaps been sufficiently illustrated ; 
 but if the reader cares to turn back to Chapter VI., 
 at page 79, he will find in a quotation from an 
 article by Mr. Stevenson, the second rule em- 
 phasized. To what is said there may be added 
 another passage from the same article : " Our art 
 is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so 
 much in making stories true as in making them 
 typical ; not so much in capturing the lineaments 
 of each fact, as in marshalling all of them toward 
 a common end." 
 
 Apropos of forming the plan, just a word more 
 may be said upon the choice of subjects, which is 
 to call attention again to the greater chances of suc- 
 cess afforded to him who is a close observer of the 
 signs of the times, and quick to understand and 
 sympathize with current intellectual and social 
 movements. He must comprehend the prevail- 
 ing " world-mood " of his own constituency. This 
 changes frequently, and what will be received to- 
 day may not be to-morrow. Those who depict 
 contemporary life, if they are thorough students, 
 are most certain to produce stories of a high qual-
 
 214 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 ity of interest at the time they are published, 
 which, in the case of a novel, is necessary to its 
 permanent recognition. " The first object of a 
 novelist," remarks Bulwer, " is to interest the 
 reader ; the next object is the quality of the in- 
 terest. Interest in his story is essential, or he will 
 not be read ; but if the quality of the interest is 
 not high, he will not be read a second time. And 
 if he be not read a second time by his own con- 
 temporaries, the chance is he will not be read once 
 by posterity." 
 
 The fact that they have accurately grasped the 
 underlying motives of contemporaneous life, and 
 thus been able to picture it vividly, has insured 
 success to writers widely different in mental con- 
 stitution, in tastes, and spheres of observation. 
 People would not be apt to compare Disraeli, 
 Turgnieff, and Dr. Edward Eggleston ; yet each, 
 within his own field of observation, has success- 
 fully done the same kind of work. The first sur- 
 veyed the world of English aristocratic society; 
 the second, the Russian middle class and peas- 
 antry ; the third, the life of American communities 
 in the West in their formative stages. The works 
 of all three have attained a permanent place in lit- 
 erature. Of Disraeli it has been justly said that 
 his novels " reflect the world he lived in and 
 show the characteristics of its society as no novels 
 have done since then." * The same thing is per- 
 
 * Ouida : North American Review.
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 215 
 
 fectly true of the others. Rnan's beautiful fu- 
 neral tribute to Turgenieff expresses the complete- 
 ness of that author's understanding of his own 
 people, wherein he refers to Turgenieff as " the 
 incarnation of a whole race." And what Mr. 
 Henry James said of the great Russian is appli- 
 cable to the others as well, and to all those writers 
 who have written successful stories portraying 
 phases of contemporary life. " This is the strength 
 of his representations of character: .they are so 
 strangely, fascinatingly particular, and yet they 
 are so recognizably general." * To this we may 
 add a word from the Marquise Lanza's " Plea for 
 the National Element in American Fiction ":f "It 
 is, moreover, a significant truth, that every really 
 great writer of fiction the world has ever seen, not 
 only has expressed a wide and tender sympathy 
 with all humanity, so to speak, but has persistently 
 emulated in his work the national character he is 
 fitted to comprehend." 
 
 Now, as to the third rule of construction, Do it 
 well, I have no more to say than I have already 
 said. I am afraid of the criticism of the masters, 
 who would see my weakness, and find out too 
 thoroughly that, though I may preach, I cannot 
 practise. Hence my precepts would be despised. 
 I would rather refer the reader to such passages of 
 Ruskin as I quoted at the beginning of Chapter VI. ; 
 
 * " Partial Portraits " : Ivan Turgenieff. 
 f Cosmopolitan Magazine, August, 1890,
 
 2i6 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 to the hints given in our discussion of Realism and 
 Idealism throughout that chapter ; to Mr. Walter 
 Besant's "Art of Fiction," and Mr. Henry James's 
 comments thereon ; to Mr. Stevenson's article ; 
 to Val6ra and Valdez ; and, above all, to the preface 
 of " Pierre et Jean," by M. de Maupassant. I 
 ought not to quote this last further than I have, 
 but I know of nothing more admirable. Fortunate 
 would it be for our novelists if they all had had a 
 Flaubert to instruct, to restrain, to guide. What 
 wisdom in his precepts ! " The smallest object 
 contains something unknown. Find it." " What- 
 ever be the thing one wishes to say, there is only 
 one noun to express it, only one verb to give it 
 life, only one adjective to qualify it. Search, then, 
 till that noun, that verb, that adjective, are dis- 
 covered. Never be content with ' very nearly '; 
 never have recourse to tricks, however happy, or 
 to buffooneries of language, to avoid a difficulty. 
 We can interpret and describe the most subtile 
 things if we bear in mind the verse of Boileau : 
 
 " ' D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir.' " * 
 
 In the same essay there is one other injunction 
 that I will repeat in closing this chapter : " Keep 
 on working. . . . Talent is long patience." 
 
 * Preface of " Pierre et Jean."
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE CRITICISM OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 IF a personal reference may be pardoned in 
 1884 the present writer published a systematic 
 work on Psychology, in two large octavo volumes. 
 This book was noticed extensively in England, 
 also in America and on the Continent of Europe. 
 There were reviews whose general tone was favor- 
 able, and also some unfavorable. In most of 
 the notices, the grounds of favor or disfavor were 
 stated. Comparison shows that every feature of 
 the work condemned by any one was praised by 
 some one else ; while many things spoken of as 
 special excellences were mentioned by others as 
 conspicuous faults. One critic thought the author 
 was weak in analysis, but strong in synthesis; an- 
 other reviewer said exactly the reverse. One was 
 " struck by the thoroughly popular nature of the 
 exposition ;" another regards it as very " abstruse 
 and tedious." Still another speaks of the writer 
 as " too modest ; " but a more discerning critic sees 
 through him, and speaks of him as illustrating 
 " the vanity of modesty." One reviewer considers 
 that he " shows hardly a sign of acquaintance with
 
 2i8 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 modern Continental psychology ; " another, that 
 " his perfect acquaintance with its * literature is 
 evident on every page." The illustration of pleas- 
 ures and pains by literary quotations is com- 
 mended in one notice, sneered at in a second, and 
 reprobated as unphilosophical in a third. Finally 
 one reviewer observes that in the polemical dis- 
 cussion of "intuitions" and "necessary truths" 
 the author appears at his best ; while a fellow 
 critic declares they have no place in the book, and 
 are of no value. 
 
 What can an author think of himself and his 
 book after reading and comparing such criticisms ? 
 It must be remembered that, in the case of the 
 work in question, the notices were supposably 
 written by specialists, familiar with the subject, 
 and of about the same grade of competency. If, 
 under such circumstances, such a contrariety of 
 opinion was developed, what can we expect from 
 the criticism of works of fiction, which people may 
 and generally do value according to their own 
 tastes and fancies of style, subject-matter, moral- 
 ity, or anything else, without study or reflection ? 
 
 The truth of the matter is, the greater part of 
 published criticisms of novels and stories is mean- 
 ingless. It signifies nothing at all, though often 
 full of sound and fury. It abounds in adjective 
 characterization, which indicates the emotions of 
 
 * Psychological.
 
 CRITICISM OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 219 
 
 the writer but conveys no ideas. If a man eat 
 good melon, but, being unhealthy, is distressed 
 thereby, and he groans, must the melon at once 
 be denounced ? Said Lichtenberg, the German 
 scientist : " If a head and a book come into col- 
 lision and a hollow sound ensues, must this neces- 
 sarily be attributed to the book?" If I read in a 
 notice merely that a certain tale is " very excel- 
 lent " or " very poor," I get no basis for any intel- 
 ligent judgment. If there be a flux of disparag- 
 ing adjectives, I may, indeed, be led unthinkingly 
 to sympathize with the writer's feeling, as I would 
 with the impassioned harangues of the political 
 assembly, or the exhortations of a Moody-and- 
 Sankey meeting. In this I may do great injustice 
 to the writer. My prejudice harms him and pre- 
 vents me from gaining knowledge, thereby injur- 
 ing me as well. But this style of criticism is much 
 more common than any better one. It substitutes 
 inflammatory words for thought. Its effect is 
 that of the tom-tom or the war-dance of the sav- 
 age, with its leaping and shouting. Have novels 
 become such a nuisance that their authors must be 
 rushed at with the tomahawk and scalping-knife ? 
 Possibly it may come to this, if story-writers do 
 not heed the excellent counsel contained in this 
 essay ! But, at all events, it is divine to forgive, 
 and much nobler to let mercy temper justice. 
 
 Two very important articles on this subject have 
 recently been published, in consequence of whose
 
 220 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 appearance the present chapter will be much 
 shorter than otherwise it would have been. One 
 of these is by Archdeacon Farrar in the Forum ; * 
 the other by Mr. Howells in Harper's Magazine. ,f 
 To these might be added a valuable paper by Mr. 
 Fawcett entitled " Should Critics be Gentlemen?":}: 
 Mr. Howells thinks that " nearly all current criti- 
 cism as practised among English and Americans is 
 falsely principled and is conditioned in evil. It 
 is falsely principled because it is unprincipled, or 
 without principles ; and it is conditioned in evil 
 because it is almost wholly anonymous." Mr. 
 Howells makes a strong argument against anony- 
 mous criticism, and one which seems to me un- 
 answerable. He speaks in behalf of the reading 
 public, not the author ; and from this point of view 
 the gain to be derived from the opposite course 
 would be very great, for many reasons which he 
 gives and which I will not repeat. Mr. Howells's 
 own comments on books in the Editor's Study, 
 the literary notes of Mr. Laurence Hutton, and the 
 review articles in the New York Sun signed " M. 
 W. H." whom everybody knows are certainly 
 much more valuable than the general run of anony- 
 mous criticism. This value does not depend upon 
 the reputation of the writer so much as it does on 
 the fact that the signing of a name is a guaran- 
 tee of all the thoroughness and honesty that self- 
 
 * May, 1890. f August, 1890, Editor's Study. 
 
 t " Agnosticism and Other Essays." M. W. Hasseltine.
 
 CRITICISM OF A WORK OF FICTION. 221 
 
 respect will induce in a critic. We can be some- 
 what sure of his fidelity to himself, at any rate ; 
 and knowing him we can understand his biases 
 and prejudices sufficiently to correct in our own 
 minds his erroneous judgments. There are fre- 
 quently published, of course, good reviews whose 
 authorship is not made known ; but in the best of 
 the newspapers following that system there are so 
 many notices so outrageously unfair, so biassed 
 and jaundiced, so destitute even of comprehension 
 of the work criticised, as to make one lose all con- 
 fidence in the literary department itself, and to 
 quite justify anything that is said in the three 
 articles above mentioned on the iniquity of jour- 
 nalistic criticism. 
 
 It seems a pity Mr. Fawcett's suggestion cannot 
 be adopted, to the effect that publishers should 
 cease sending copies of books for review to news- 
 papers generally. Some journals publish their list 
 of books received with the arrogant heading : " We 
 consider mention of the receipt of a book in this 
 column a full equivalent therefor ; as regards fur- 
 ther notice, we shall be guided wholly by the 
 interests of our readers." The publisher would 
 do well to send such papers a catalogue only. It 
 is for the interest of the readers to know what 
 books are coming out, and if the editors do not 
 inform them it will be worse for the paper. But 
 the fact that such announcements appear shows 
 the need of a change in the practice, in the interest
 
 222 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 of literature. The implication is that a book is 
 prima facie trash, with a presumption against it to 
 be overcome before it is entitled to respectful con- 
 sideration. We cannot believe that literature has 
 reached this low condition, despite the great mul- 
 tiplication of books. It is quite true, though, 
 that a newspaper cannot devote its whole space 
 to book notices. Why not, then, eliminate them 
 entirely, relegating them to journals specially de- 
 voted to literary topics? The increase in the num- 
 ber of such publications as " The Book-Buyer," ' 
 " Book-Chat," f " Notes on Books," J and " Liter- 
 ary News," would make such a course far easier 
 than formerly. One gets much more information 
 from these issues of publishing houses than he 
 does from the literary notices of most newspapers. 
 If the latter will not have signed criticisms, it 
 would be a great gain if they would only publish 
 condensed notices, stating fairly what the book 
 is without making any attempt to characterize. 
 Some few do precisely this, and greatly to the 
 advantage of the reader. 
 
 To know what proper criticism is, one must 
 study the works of writers who are truly critics. 
 Of such, among those writing in the English lan- 
 guage and upon works of fiction, Mr. Henry 
 James appears to me to be the greatest living 
 
 * Chas. Scribner's Sons. 
 
 f Brentano. 
 
 % Longmans, Green & Co.
 
 CRITICISM OF A WORK OF FICTION. 
 
 223 
 
 example. Of the French, I need only mention 
 MM. Taine, Lemaitre, Brunetiere, and Bourget. 
 The art of criticism requires fidelity to truth and 
 justice, an ability to weigh and compare, analy- 
 tical power, a wide acquaintance with literature, 
 a clear understanding of human nature, and a 
 thorough knowledge of social life the action and 
 reaction of one mind upon another. 
 
 But while justice demands that a novel-writer be 
 understood, that the plan of his work be compre- 
 hended, and that its execution be judged fairly, 
 the privilege remains to the reader, more unre- 
 servedly in the case of the novel than perhaps in 
 any other kind of literature, of saying, " I do not 
 like it," without being obliged to justify the dis- 
 like by argument. One may choose his own 
 company, and, if he does not enjoy one set, he is 
 not obliged to say that he does, or to seek that 
 coterie. One person may prefer Gaboriau and 
 another George Eliot. From this, however, noth- 
 ing could be argued as to the comparative excel- 
 lence of the two authors, except, perhaps, from 
 the characters of the readers. Yet, though our 
 preference be decided, we must not apply it as 
 universal law. The tendency to do so is some- 
 times very strong, and that is always one source 
 of difficulty in estimating the comparative merits 
 of novels. But I think we shall always find that, 
 the wider the reach of their influence, the greater 
 number of people they appeal to, the more success
 
 224 PHILOSOPHY OF FICTION. 
 
 must they be deemed to have attained on the 
 whole. We should, however, be careful to take 
 into account not merely the present interest in 
 them, but also their ability to maintain a place 
 permanently in literature. 
 
 In closing this essay, I am constrained to repeat 
 the words of Mr. Besant in concluding his lecture 
 on the " Art of Fiction " : " Wherever you find 
 good and faithful work, with truth, sympathy, and 
 clearness of purpose, I pray you to give the 
 author of that work the praise as to an artist an 
 artist like the rest the praise that you so readily 
 accord to the earnest student of any other art. 
 As for the great masters of the art, ... I 
 for one feel irritated when the critics begin to 
 appraise, compare, and to estimate them ; there is 
 nothing, I think, that we can give them but ad- 
 miration that is unspeakable and gratitude that is 
 silent. This silence proves more eloquently than 
 any words how great, how beautiful an art is that 
 of Fiction." 
 
 THE END.
 
 AUTHORS CITED OR QUOTED, WITH 
 REFERENCES TO PAGES. 
 
 Abbott, 17. 
 Akenside, 158. 
 Alden, W. L., 66, 189. 
 Andersen, 133. 
 Arreat, 30, 154, 203. 
 Austen, Jane, 125. 
 
 Bain, A., 140. 
 
 Balzac, g, 36, 57, 64, 68, 71, 95, 
 
 III, I2O, 169, 197, 212. 
 Bayne, P., 116, 121. 
 Beckford, 98. 
 Belot, 14. 
 Bernard, 56. 
 
 Besant, W., 89, 216, 224. 
 Black, 19, 87. 
 Boileau, 216. 
 
 Bourget, 66, 194, 196, 223. 
 Boyesen, 178, 199. 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 121, 191. 
 Brownell, W. C., 124. 
 Browning, Mrs., 191. 
 Brunetiere, 223. 
 Bryant, 5. 
 Buchanan, 192. 
 Bulwer, E., 36, 79, 85, 98, 211, 
 
 214. 
 
 Cape Cod Folks, 21. 
 
 Casanova, 40. 
 
 Chaucer, 5. 
 
 Cobbe, Frances P., 82. 
 
 Coombs, Mrs. Chas. A., 170. 
 
 Cooper, 19. 
 Crawford, Marion, 166. 
 
 Dale, Alan, 14. 
 Dante, 5. 
 Darwin, 123. 
 Daudet, A., 176, 189. 
 David-Sauvageot, 74, 80, 81, 
 
 204. 
 
 De Mille, 20. 
 De Quincey, 137. 
 De Sade. 172. 
 De Vogue, no, 133. 
 Dickens, 36, 94, 102, no, 125. 
 Disraeli, 71, 214. 
 Dostoyevsky, no, 169. 
 
 Ebers, 19. 
 
 Edgeworth, Mrs., 128. 
 Eggleston, Edward, 36, 191, 
 
 214. 
 
 Eggleston, George Gary, 180. 
 Eliot, George, I, 36, 37, 46, 53, 
 
 71, 107, 120, 125, 134, 191, 
 
 223. 
 
 Farrar, 220. 
 
 Fawcett, 122, 211, 220. 
 
 Flaubert, 66, 183, 216. 
 
 Foggazaro, I2O. 
 
 Fouque, 133. 
 
 Frederick III., Diary, 21. 
 
 Gaboriau, 112, 223.
 
 226 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gautier, 171, 184. 
 Gogol, 55. 
 Goldsmith, 5. 
 
 Haggard, 8, 13, 37, 92, 94. 
 
 Hammond, 99. 
 
 Hawthorne, N., 107, 125. 
 
 Herndon, 21. 
 
 Heyse, 186. 
 
 Higginson, 134. 
 
 Hobbes, 140. 
 
 Holmes, 183. 
 
 Homer, 5, 89. 
 
 Horace, 93. 
 
 Ho wells, 36, 134, 136, 220. 
 
 Hugo, 96, no, in. 
 
 James, Henry, 64, 68, 125, 182, 
 
 190, 192, 210, 215, 2l6, 222. 
 
 Kipling, 210. 
 Knox, 1 8. 
 
 Lanza, 99, 191, 215. 
 Lathrop, G. P., 134. 
 Lemaitre, 50, 63, 223. 
 Lichtenberg, 219. 
 Lindau, 177. 
 
 Masson, 137. 
 
 Matthews, Brander, 115, 208. 
 
 Maupassant, 46, 59, 60, 66, 167, 
 
 188, 197, 209, 210, 216. 
 Meredith, Owen (Earl Lytton), 
 
 123. 
 
 Milton, 5, 122. 
 Moliere, 9, 8l. 
 Montaigne, 93. 
 Mtthlbach, 19, 37. 
 Munchausen, 7. 
 
 Ouida, 19, 81, 88, 190, 211, 214. 
 Plato, 5. 
 
 Radcliffe, Anne, 98. 
 Reade, 2JI. 
 
 Reid, 17. 
 Renan, 215. 
 Richardson, I. 
 Roe, 128, 178, 199. 
 Ruskin, 47, 77, 88, 215. 
 
 Saltus, E., 166, 194. 
 
 Sand, George, 120, 126, 2IO. 
 
 Scott, Walter, 8, 19, 46, 92, 
 
 106, 125. 
 
 Seelye, J. H., 54. 
 Shakespeare, 9, 64. 
 Smollett, 94, 112. 
 Sophocles, 203. 
 Sparks, 21. 
 Spencer, H., 70, 140. 
 Star, New York, article, 194. 
 Stendhal, 63, 64. 
 Stevenson, 79, 94, 116, 211, 213, 
 
 216. 
 
 Stockton, 7. 
 Stowe, Mrs., 28. 
 Sue, 96, in. 
 Sully, 114, 200, 203. 
 Swedenborg, 184. 
 Swift, 7. 
 
 Taine, 64, 102, 126. 
 Thackeray, 36, 46, 95, 125. 
 Tolstoi', 94, 105, 107, 112, 169, 
 
 177, 209, 210, 212. 
 Tribune, New York, article, 194. 
 Trollope, 46. 
 Tuckerman, 46, 134. 
 Turgenieff, 133, 196, 209, 214, 
 
 215- 
 
 Valdez, 216. 
 Vale'ra, 212, 216. 
 Veron, 33, 75. 
 
 Walpole, 98. 
 Ward, Mrs. H., 9. 
 Wordsworth, 5. 
 
 Zola, I, 22, 46, 55-63, 66-71, 
 74, ill, 136, 200.
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 A SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 BY DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 2 vols., 8vo, 1226 pages. 
 
 The Leeds (England) Mercury. 
 This is a very comprehensive and important work. 
 
 The Journal of Mental Science (England). 
 
 Mr. Thompson's work accomplishes its aim in a very successful manner. 
 The book may without hesitation be pronounced a good one. 
 
 The Edinburgh Scotsman. 
 
 In the seventy-five chapters of these bulky volumes a more detailed and 
 systematic account is given of the genesis and development of states of 
 consciousness than can be found in any other single work in the language. 
 
 Mr. Thompson is an accomplished and earnest searcher after truth. 
 
 The N. Y. Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 It is undoubtedly the most important contribution to psychological science 
 that any American has yet produced ; nor is there any foreign work with 
 which we are acquainted that contains so exhaustive, so instructive, and 
 well presented a digest of the subject as this. 
 
 The Academy (England). 
 
 Mr. Thompson's treatise, though named A System of Psychology \ Is in 
 reality, in outline at least, a system of philosophy. 
 
 While following the most plainly marked track in the fields of English 
 thought, Mr. Thompson is independent, and now and again impressively 
 original. 
 
 The Contemporary Review (England). 
 
 Mr. Thompson is an acute and careful observer himself, and a systematic 
 student of the results put forward by other workers. 
 
 The author has amply made good the modest claim he puts forward for 
 himself as an independent student. A. SETH. 
 
 I
 
 Mind (England). 
 
 The passages that have been referred to must, of course, be taken merely 
 as specimens of Mr. Thompson's contributions to psychology, not as a 
 complete account of all that he has done ; but they are sufficient to show 
 that if he has not systematized the science from any new point of view, he 
 has at least carried the analytical methods of the older psychology further 
 in various directions. 
 
 Nature (England). 
 
 In criticising any new book, we ought to ask whether the author has 
 made any advance on his immediate predecessors. We ought, in fact, to 
 apply to the particular author we are criticising the test of progress to 
 which psychology as a whole may be submitted. Mr. Thompson's book 
 will emerge successfully from an examination such as that which is here 
 suggested. In dealing with many special questions he goes beyond the 
 later English psychologists, just as they themselves have gone beyond 
 Locke. 
 
 We may conclude by saying that, although in some respects an unequal 
 book, it is decidedly an important contribution of America to the treatment 
 of psychology on the lines with which English readers are most familiar. 
 
 The Index (Boston, Matt.). 
 
 It is recognized as a standard work at once. (First notice.} 
 
 This work proves the author to be a man of large intellectual grasp, of 
 keen critical and analytical ability, and at the same time of large construct- 
 ive power and capacity for generalization, of ample acquaintance with 
 philosophy and literature. 
 
 One need not assent to all that Mr. Thompson advances in order to 
 appreciate his robust thought, his masterly reasoning, his clear, strong 
 style and truly philosophic spirit. (Second notice.) 
 
 It is without doubt the most profound, extensive, and original work on 
 psychology that this country has produced. ( Third notice.) 
 
 Revue Philosophique (Paris). 
 
 We consider that Mr. Thompson has rendered a great service to psychol- 
 ogists in undertaking to systematize results actually attained ; he has suc- 
 ceeded in presenting them in clear and precise form ; he has in many places 
 added useful information, and the reading of his work is eminently sug- 
 gestive. It seems to us, above all, that he has the great merit of producing 
 a work almost entirely psychological. F. PICAVKT.
 
 3 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 BY DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 8vo., 281 pages. 
 
 The Journal of Education (England). 
 
 Mr. Thompson has already made a name for himself as a psychologist, and 
 he handles the questions of moral science with an acuteness which will sus- 
 tain his reputation. 
 
 The N. Y. Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 A multitude of the pressing problems of our social life are suggested and 
 discussed in this compact volume with such frankness, sincerity, ability, and 
 good feeling that we can heartily commend it not only to the professional 
 scholar, but to all thoughtful men and women. 
 
 The Open Court (Chicago, III.). 
 
 The style of our author is admirably clear, and the general tone of the 
 discussion, covering, as it does, a wide range of practical questions which 
 are uppermost in the thought of millions at the present day, will doubtless 
 secure for Mr. Thompson's book a wide circle of intelligent readers. 
 
 The Guardian (England). 
 
 We admire his [the author's] originality and analytical power, his obvious 
 desire to be true to facts, his almost omnivorous tastes in literature, and, 
 above all, his extreme modesty and self-effacement. Even when we come 
 to the end and remember that we disagree with his first principles, there 
 remains with us a consciousness of much that is true and some things which 
 are new, while in lucidity of exposition and fearlessness of statement Mr. 
 Thompson reminds us] more of John Stuart Mill than of any other of his 
 chosen leaders. 
 
 Knowledge (England). 
 
 Mr. Thompson, in the very able and important work before us, investi- 
 gates the nature and origin of evil, and essays to point out the most hopeful 
 means for its elimination. . . . He discusses at length the suggested 
 methods (social, political, and ecclesiastical) for reducing evil to a mini- 
 mum, which have been and are still advanced, and shows trenchantly the 
 fallacies which underlie them all. . . . We will not diminish the pleas- 
 ure with which the reader will peruse this volume, by any more detailed 
 analysis of its contents ; suffice it to say that Mr. Thompson has made a 
 real and enduring contribution to ethical philosophy.
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS OF THE HUMAN 
 MIND. 
 
 BY DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 8vo, 184 pages. 
 
 The Popular Science Monthly (New York). 
 
 In the volume before us Mr. Thompson has entered upon a fruitful field 
 of thought and discussion ; one, moreover, which requires great tact and 
 delicacy in its cultivation, if the author would secure the sympathetic and 
 respectful attention of his readers. In this respect, Mr. Thompson has 
 been notably successful. His treatment of his topic is calm, temperate, 
 philosophical, free from bias, appealing to reason rather than to theological 
 or anti-theological prejudices. While his discussion of the religious prob- 
 lem is entirely frank, manly, and unconventional, it is also duly considerate 
 of those conceptions which he is compelled to discredit and oppose. . . . 
 The book, as a whole, stimulates thought and holds the attention of the 
 reader. In connection with " A System of Psychology" and "The Problem 
 of Evil," it justifies us in ranking its author among our ablest philosophical 
 thinkers. 
 
 The Manchester (England) Examiner. 
 
 Readers of the more thoughtful type who are acquainted with Mr. Daniel 
 Greenleaf Thompson's " System of Psychology," and his very suggestive 
 treatment of " The Problem of Evil," will extend a hearty welcome to his 
 new work. . . . Though his work cannot be compared with the recent 
 magnificent contribution to the literature of the same great theme by Dr. 
 James Martineau, it is full of acute, sound, and penetrating thought. Of 
 the four sections into which the book is divided, perhaps the second . . . 
 is the richest in interest ; but the work, from first to last, is well worthy of 
 careful study. 
 
 Mind. 
 
 Mr. Thompson's present work is a study of the science, not of religions 
 as they exist or have existed, but of religion as a general fact of conscious 
 experience. His aim is rather to determine what beliefs can rationally be 
 held about the supernatural than to describe the process by which the super- 
 natural comes to be believed in ; though, in accordance with his tradi- 
 tional view of philosophic method, he makes an investigation of this prelim- 
 inary to his determination of the limits of rational belief, and more generally 
 bases his religious philosophy on his previous work in psychology and 
 ethics.
 
 SOCIAL PROGRESS. 
 
 BY DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON. 
 8vo, 182 pages. 
 
 New York Times. 
 
 There is a matter of exceeding interest to be found in this volume, which 
 is a cool and dispassionate analysis of human actions. 
 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 The book is full of meat for thoughtful readers. . . . We commend it to 
 the reading of every man who wishes to see the way clearer to political and 
 social reform in our own country. 
 
 Edinburgh Scotsman. 
 
 An admirable, clear, and logical exposition of those principles which 
 are now generally recognized as the essential conditions of national and 
 individual well being. 
 
 Science, 
 
 The author's style is clear and flowing, so that the book is easy and 
 agreeable to read ; and there is much in it that thinkers of all schools will 
 agree with. 
 
 The Epoch. 
 
 Mr. Thompson shows great analytical power, clearness of statement, 
 moderateness of view, and frequently originality. This book might well 
 be read by every American citizen, for even old thoughts are put in a for- 
 cible, and often original, way. 
 
 The Christian Union. 
 
 The best part of Mr. Thompson's book is that in which he discusses 
 ioral and religious ideas. He urges the duty of intellectual hospitality, 
 id himself recognizes it in his treatment of Christian ideas which he does 
 it accept. He urges upon Christian people a willingness to let those who 
 ler with them in faith unite with them in good works, reminding them 
 the Scripture teaching that those who " do the will " shall " know the 
 
 :trine. 
 
 A merican Hebrew. 
 
 n important and valuable contribution to political science. He evinces 
 
 asterly logical equipment. His eduction of the principles of liberty 
 
 equality is certainly to be classed with the very best specimens of close 
 
 uiing upon abstract subjects. Mr. Thompson has contributed a worthy 
 
 ion to the literature of philosophical thought ; his speculative genius 
 
 'found and broad enough to give him high rank not only among the 
 
 tect thinkers in America, but among the acutest metaphysicians of 
 
 ic.
 
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