{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_20843/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_20843","id":"gutenberg_20843","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20843","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Fiction -- History and criticism"],"text":"Produced by Robert Connal, Martin Pettit and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at\nhttp://gallica.bnf.fr)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_Thomas Hill Green_\n\n\n_An Estimate of The Value and Influence\n\nOf\n\nWorks of Fiction In Modern Times_\n\n\n_Edited With Introduction and Notes\n\nBy\n\nFred Newton Scott\n\nProfessor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan_\n\n\n                                        _George Wahr\n                                        Ann Arbor\n                                        Michigan\n                                        1911_\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT\n\nFRED NEWTON SCOTT\n\n1911\n\n\nTHE ANN ARBOR PRESS\nANN ARBOR, MICH.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\n_For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with an\nadvanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. It\nalways arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue that\nit imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and centers\nit upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannot\neasily be overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who has\nknown only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is a\nfine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, and\nuncompromising thinker such as Green is. As Green says of the hearer of\ntragedy,_ \"He bears about him, for a time at least, among the rank\nvapors of the earth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the\nhigher air.\" _I trust that this reprint, by making the essay more easily\naccessible than it has been heretofore, will help to raise the grade of\nstudent thought and taste and criticism._\n\n                                                              F. N. S.\n_University of Michigan\nDecember 1, 1910._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n                                                          PAGE\nIntroduction                                                 9\nI. PRINCIPLES OF ART                                        19\n   a. Epic, Drama, and Novel                                19\n   b. Imitation vs. Art                                     21\n   c. Nature the Creation of Thought                        22\n   d. The 'Outward' aspect of Nature                        23\n   e. Conquest of Nature by Art                             24\n   f. The Artist as Idealizer                               26\n   g. The Epic                                              27\n   h. Tragedy as Purifier of the Passions                   29\n   i. Tragedy the Elevation of Life                         33\n   j. Conditions Favorable to Tragedy                       34\nII. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART                       35\n   a. Beginnings of the Novel                               35\n   b. Characteristics of the _Spectator_                    36\n   c. The Modern Novel a Reflection of Ordinary Life        38\n   d. Naturalism vs. Idealism                               43\n   e. Tragedy and the Novel                                 44\n   f. The Epic and the Novel                                47\n   g. Poetry and Prose                                      49\n   h. The Novel an Incomplete Presentation of Life          52\n   i. Prudence the Novelist's Highest Morality              54\n   j. Evil Effects of Novel-reading                         56\nIII. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL                             60\n   a. A Widener of Experience                               60\n   b. An Expander of Sympathies                             63\n   c. A Creator of Public Sentiment                         69\n   d. A Leveller of Intellects                              69\n\nAPPENDIX.\n\n   a. An Appreciation of Green's Essay                      72\n   b. Hegel on the Novel                                    77\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nThomas Hill Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, April 7, 1836. His\nearly education was acquired first at home under his father, the rector\nof Birkin, then at Rugby, where he was sent at the age of fourteen. In\n1855 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and came under the influence of\nJowett, afterwards famous as Master of Balliol and translator of Plato.\nThough he matured early, Green was not a brilliant student. On the\ncontrary, he appeared to be indolent and sluggish. \"No man,\" wrote one\nof his fellow-students in 1862, \"is driven with greater difficulty to\nwork not to his taste.... He wrote some of the best college essays: he\nnever sent them in on the right day, and might generally be seen on the\nMonday pondering over essays which every one else had sent in on the\nFriday night.\" These traits, however, as it proved later, were the index\nnot of a vagrant mind, but of independence of thought and of\npreoccupation with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute of\na fellow-student: \"On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the\nimpress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself,\nand whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original character\nwherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with a\nlove for abstract speculation.\" In the end, his solid qualities of mind\nand character made so strong an impression upon the University\nauthorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the same\ntime he became lecturer on ancient and modern history. Though from the\nbeginning of his student life he had been drawn to an academic career\nand especially to the study of philosophy, he was now for a period\nundecided what to make his life-work. At one time he thought of going\ninto journalism in India. In 1864, having accepted a place with the\nRoyal Commission on Middle Class Schools, he prepared a valuable report\nupon the organization of high schools and their relation to the\nuniversity. Finally, however, in 1866, his indecision was brought to an\nend. Obtaining an appointment in that year to a position on the teaching\nstaff of Balliol College, he settled down to the work of a tutor in\nphilosophy. When Jowett was made Master of Balliol, Green became, under\nhim, the responsible manager of the college, performing the manifold\nsmall duties of the position with patience, thoroughness, and tact.\n\nIn 1871 he was married to Miss Charlotte Symonds, sister of John\nAddington Symonds.\n\nTwice Green was candidate for a professorship; once in 1864 when he\napplied for the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, and again in\n1867 when the Waynflate professorship of moral and metaphysical\nphilosophy fell vacant at Oxford. In both cases he was unsuccessful. It\nwas not until 1878, by his election to the Whyte's professorship of\nmoral philosophy, that he obtained the position and the independence he\nhad long deserved. His enjoyment of the honor was brief. He died of\nblood-poisoning, after an illness of only ten days, March 26, 1882.\n\nGreen's character was compounded of a variety of elements. The shyness\nand reserve characteristic of many cultivated Englishmen, was\naccentuated in his case by a natural austerity and an absorption in\nserious thought. But though his temper was puritanic and inclined to\nmoroseness, there was no sourness or cynicism in it. \"If,\" he wrote to\nMiss Symonds, \"I am rather a melancholy bird, given to physical fatigue\nand depression, yet I have never known for a moment what it was to be\nweary of life, as the youth of this age are fond of saying that they\nare. The world has always seemed very good to me.\" Grim though he might\nbe outwardly, he had a keen sense of humor and a warmth of interest in\nhis fellows that made him, for those who broke through his reserve, a\ncharming companion. His most characteristic quality was elevation of\nmind. In the essay that is here reprinted he speaks of \"that aspiring\npride which arises from the sense of walking in intellect on the necks\nof a subject crowd.\" Something of this elevation, this aloofness from\nthe vulgar, characterized all of his utterances and gave to them at\ntimes a solemn fervency akin to that of the Hebrew prophets. This trait\nis finely portrayed in the following description of the tutor Grey (a\nthin disguise for Green) in Mrs. Ward's 'Robert Elsmere:'\n\n\n     \"In after years memory could always recall to him at will the face\n     and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk\n     under the brows, the midland accent, the make of limb and features\n     which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength\n     and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the\n     fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed,\n     was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the\n     generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it\n     overflowed of necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him,\n     kindling and enriching.\"\n\n\nGreen's contributions to philosophy were partly constructive, partly\n(and perhaps mainly) critical and destructive. On the critical side, his\ngreatest effort was his attack upon the philosophy of Hume in two\nmasterly Introductions to an edition of Hume's 'Works,' published in\n1874-5. English philosophical thinking, so Green held, had stuck fast\nin the scepticism of Hume. Such forward movement in thought as there had\nbeen since the 18th Century, had come mainly through the writings of men\nlike Wordsworth and Shelley--men who having seen deeply into life, had\nexpressed themselves in imaginative, not in philosophical ways. To set\nthe stagnant tide of speculative thinking in motion, involved a two-fold\ntask: on one side the breaking down of the barriers erected by the\nsensationalist and materialist schools of the 17th and 18th centuries,\nand on the other side the letting in of a current of fresh ideas from\nsome source outside of England. The first, or destructive, task Green\nperformed with remarkable success in the two Introductions. For the new\nand truer ideas which were to displace the old, he naturally looked to\nGermany, whose methods of research were just coming into vogue at Oxford\nthrough the influence of Pattison and Jowett. And since to speculative\nthinkers of that time German philosophy meant the philosophy of Hegel,\nGreen's fundamental conceptions were derived by Hegelian modes of\nthinking. In other words, he was a neo-Hegelian. But, as his biographer\nnotes, he never committed himself unreservedly to the Hegelian credo.\n\"While he regarded Hegel's system as the 'last word of philosophy,' he\ndid not occupy himself with the exposition of it, but with the\nreconsideration of the elements in Kant of which it was the\ndevelopment.\" That is, he was a neo-Kantian as well as a neo-Hegelian.\nOf his constructive thinking in these channels the most complete\nembodiment is his 'Prolegomena to Ethics.'\n\nThough naturally his contributions to philosophy are first in bulk and\nimportance, Green's writings cover a considerable range of subjects.\nListed in the order of publication, they are as follows: 'The Force of\nCircumstances,' published in _Undergraduate Papers_, 1858; 'An Estimate\nof the Value and Influence of Prose Fiction,' published as a prize\nessay, 1862; 'The Philosophy of Aristotle' and 'Popular Philosophy in\nits relation to Life,' _North British Review_, Sept., 1866, and March,\n1868; Introductions to 'Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' 1874-5; 'The\nGrading of Secondary Schools,' _Journal of Education_, May, 1877; Review\nof E. Caird's 'Philosophy of Kant,' _Academy_, Sept. 22, 1877; 'Mr.\nSpencer on the Relations of Subject and Object,' _Contemporary Review_,\nDec., 1877; 'Mr. Spencer on the Independence of Matter,' _ibid._, March,\n1878; 'Mr. Lewes' Account of Experience,' _ibid._, July, 1878; review of\nJ. Caird's 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,' _Academy_, July\n10, 1880; 'Answer to Mr. Hodgson,' _Contemporary Review_, January, 1881;\nreview of J. Watson's 'Kant and his English Critics,' _Academy_,\nSeptember 17, 24, 1881; 'Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Control,'\n1881; 'The Work to be done by the New Oxford High School,' 1882;\n'Prolegomena to Ethics,' 1883; 'The Witness of God' and 'Faith'\n(delivered in 1870 and 1877, and at the time printed for private\ncirculation), 1884.\n\nAll of the foregoing, with the exception of the 'Prolegomena to Ethics,'\nare included in the 'Works' edited by R. L. Nettleship (3 Vols., 1885,\n2d Ed. 1889, Longmans). The 'Works' contain, in addition, the following\nwritings not previously published: An essay on 'The Influence of\nCivilization on Genius'; an essay on 'Christian Dogma'; an article on\n'Mr. Lewes' Account of the Social Medium,' written for the _Contemporary\nReview_, but not used; four lectures or addresses on the New Testament;\nfour lectures on 'The English Commonwealth'; a series of lectures on\n'The Philosophy of Kant,' on 'Logic' and on 'The principles of Political\nObligations'; a lecture on 'The Different Senses of Freedom as Applied\nto Will and to the Moral Progress of Man'; and a fragment on\n'Immortality.'\n\nAside from occasional references to poetry and art in his philosophical\nwritings, as, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the\n'Prolegomena,' the essay on fiction here reprinted is Green's only\nventure in the field of aesthetic criticism. When we remember that it\nwas one of his earliest productions, having been submitted for the\nChancellor's prize in 1862, when Green was but 26 years of age, the\nmaturity of both style and contents seems remarkable. It is in fact a\nmonumental piece of literary criticism, sufficient to establish the\nreputation of many a lesser writer. At the same time, however, there is\nabout it an air of constraint which shows that the author was not at\nease in this kind of speculation. He was fencing, so to speak, with his\nleft hand. His mind was so absorbed in the metaphysical, ethical, and\nreligious aspects of experience that upon the aesthetic as such he had\nlittle attention to bestow. When he approached aesthetic problems at all\nit was for the purpose of obtaining data which he could employ in other\nfields of thought. He was obviously not in sympathy with the aims of\nEnglish novelists. He had no expert knowledge of the history of fiction\nin England, and no knowledge at all, so far as appears, of its history\nin other countries. Probably he misunderstood the relation, in certain\nparticulars, of the novel to the epic. Nevertheless, his appreciation of\nconcrete works of art was so genuine and profound, his insight so clear,\nhis expressed judgments so candid, that any contact of his mind with\nart, literary or other, could not fail to be illuminating. Whatever its\nlimitations, the essay has at least one distinguishing merit: in it a\nfundamental principle of criticism is applied with merciless rigor to\nthe solution of a literary problem. The products of such a method are\ncertain to be interesting and valuable. Whether we agree with the\nauthor's conclusions or not, we can at least see whence he derives them\nand feel the stimulus which always comes from the spectacle of a\npowerful mind grappling in deadly earnest with momentous questions of\nart and life.\n\n\n\n\n                 AN ESTIMATE\n                   of the\n            Value and Influence of\n              Works of Fiction in\n                 Modern Times\n\n\n\n\nI. PRINCIPLES OF ART\n\n\n\n\nA. EPIC, DRAMA, AND NOVEL\n\n\n1. We commonly distinguish writings which appeal directly to the\nemotions from those of which the immediate object is the conveyance of\nknowledge, by applying to the former a term of conveniently loose\nmeaning, \"works of imagination.\" Of the kinds included in the wide\ndenotation of this term there are three, between which it seems\ndifficult at first sight to draw a definite line; which appeal to\nsimilar feelings, and excite a similar interest, in the different ages\nto which each is appropriate. These are the epic poem, the drama, and\nthe novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life and\naction, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In each\nmen are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, but\nin co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of two\nelements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and\ncharacter. In view of these common features, we might be tempted at\nfirst sight to suppose the difference between the three kinds to be\nmerely one of form, merely the difference between the vehicle of prose\nand the vehicle of metre. We shall find, however, on deeper inquiry,\nthat to the true artist, who does not find his materials in the world,\nbut creates them according to the inner laws by which the world and\nhimself are governed, the vehicle is not more a part of his creation\nthan the \"impassioned truth\" which it conveys. Here, as elsewhere, form\nand substance are inseparable; and the difference of form that\ndistinguishes the novel from the other kinds of composition which it\nseems for the present to have superseded, symbolises, or rather is\nidentical with, a different potency in the art by which the substance is\ncreated.[1]\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[1] \"Though in its most general sense the substance and matter of all\nfine art is the same, issuing from the common source of the human desire\nfor expression, yet the region of fancy corresponding to each medium of\nutterance is molded by intercourse with that medium, and acquires an\nindividuality which is not directly reducible to terms of any other\nregion of aesthetic fancy. Feeling, in short, is modified in becoming\ncommunicable; and the feeling which has become communicable in music is\nnot capable of re-translation into the feeling which has become\ncommunicable in painting. Thus the arts have no doubt in common a human\nand even rational content--rational in so far as the feelings which are\nembodied in expression, for expression's sake, arise in connection with\nideas and purposes; but each of them has separately its own peculiar\nphysical medium of expression and also a whole region of modified\nfeeling or fancy which constitutes the material proper to be expressed\nin the medium and according to the laws of each particular art.\"--B.\nBosanquet, 'The Relation of the Fine Arts to One Another' (_Proceedings\nof the Aristotelian Society_).\n\n\n\n\nB. IMITATION vs. ART\n\n\n2. Mere copying is not art. The farther the artist rises above the stage\nof imitation, the higher is his art, the more elevating its influence on\nthose who can enter into its spirit. If the landscape-painter does\nnothing more than represent nature as seen by the outward eye, the\nvulgar objection against looking at pictures--\"I can see as fine a view\nas this any day\"--is unquestionably valid. But if the painter is\nanything better than a photographer, he does far more than this. He\nbrings nature before us, as we have seen it, perhaps, only once or twice\nin our lives, under the influence of some strong emotion. He does that\nfor us which we cannot do for ourselves; he reproduces those moments of\nspiritual exaltation in which \"we feel that we are greater than we\nknow\"--moments which we can remember, and of which the mere memory may\nbe the light of our lives, but which no act of our own will can bring\nback. It is not till the distinction has been appreciated between nature\nas it is and nature as we make it to be, between that which we see and\nthat which \"having not seen we love,\" that any branch of art can be\nreckoned in its proper value.\n\n\n\n\nC. NATURE THE CREATION OF THOUGHT\n\n\n3. In one sense of the the word, it would no doubt be true to say that\nnature is simply and altogether that which we make it to be. Modern\nphilosophy has discarded the language which represented our knowledge of\nthings as the result of impressions and the transmission of images.[2]\nIf we still not only speak but think of ourselves as primarily passive\nand in contact with an alien world, this arises simply from the\ndifficulty of conceiving a pure spontaneous activity. Driven from the\ncrude imagination which found the primary condition of knowledge in the\nreception of \"ideas\" from without, \"common sense\" took refuge in the\nmore refined hypothesis of unknown objects, which cause our sensations,\nand through sensations our knowledge.[3] But this standing-ground has\nbeen swept away by the consideration that such a cause may be found\nwithin as well as without, in the laws of the subject's activity as well\nas in objects confessedly beyond the reach of cognition. Our ultimate\nanalysis can find no element in knowledge which is not supplied by\nourselves in conformity to a ruling law, or which exists independently\nof the action of human thought.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[2] As, _e.g._, in the philosophy of Locke.\n\n[3] Probably referring to Herbert Spencer.\n\n\n\n\nD. THE \"OUTWARD\" ASPECT OF NATURE\n\n\n4. But though the world of nature is, in this sense, a world of man's\nown creation, it is so in a different way from the world of art and of\nphilosophy. Thought is indeed its parent, but thought in its primary\nstage fails to recognize it as its own, fails to transfer to it its own\nattributes of universality, and identity in difference. It sees outward\nobjects merely in their diversity and isolation. It seeks to penetrate\nnature by endless dichotomy, glorying in that dissection of unity which\nis the abdication of its own prerogative.[4] It treats outward things\nas ministering to animal wants, as the sources of personal and\nparticular pleasures and pains; and thus induces the sense of bondage,\nof collision with a world in which it has not yet learnt to find itself.\nIt places the end of human life not in harmony with the law which is the\nhighest form of itself, but in happiness, _i.e._, in the extraction of\nthe greatest possible amount of enjoyment from a world to which it seems\nto be accidentally related. The view of things corresponding to this\nstage of thought is what we commonly call their outward aspect. It is\nthe aspect of matter-of-fact, of logic, of \"mere morality,\" as opposed\nto that of art, of philosophy, and religion.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[4] \"Life,\" says Professor Dewey ('Studies in Logical Theory,' p. 81),\n\"proposes to maintain at all hazards the unity of its own process.\" And\nin a foot-note he adds: \"Professor James's satisfaction in the\ncontemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radical\nhaving-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. The\nsatisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brute\ndiversity becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts\nitself in its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and\nintellectual and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is\ncommoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an\nemotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and\nromantic affection are full of examples.\"\n\n\n\n\nE. CONQUEST OF NATURE BY ART\n\n\n5. The perfection of this of latter and higher view involves the\nabsolute fusion of thought and things. Its full attainment is a new\ncreation of the world. Yet it is but the discovery of a relationship\nwhich was from the beginning, the adoption by thought of a child which\nwas never other than its own. The habitual interpretation of natural\nevents by the analogy of human design, to which every hour's\nconversation testifies, is the evidence that to the ordinary man nature\npresents itself not as something external, but, like a friend, as\n\"another himself.\" The true conquest of nature is but the completion of\nthe reconciliation thus anticipated in the everyday language and\nconsciousness of mankind. When the mind has come to see in the endless\nflux of outward things, not a succession of isolated phenomena, but the\nreflex of its own development into an infinite variety of laws on a\nbasis of identity--when the laws of nature are raised to the character\nof laws which regulate admiration and love--when the experiences of life\nare held together in a medium of pure emotion, and the animal element so\nfused with the spiritual as to form one organization through which the\nsame impulse runs with unimpeded energy--then man has made nature his\nown, by becoming a conscious partaker of the reason which animates him\nand it.[5] The attainment of this consummation is the end of life: but\nit is an end that can never be fully realised, while \"dualism\" remains a\nnecessary condition of humanity. To most men it is as a land very far\noff, of which occasional glimpses are caught from some \"specular mount\"\nof philosophic or poetic thought. It can only approach realisation\nthrough the operation of a power which can penetrate the whole man, and\nact on every moment of his life. But that power, which in the form of\nreligion can make every meal a sacrament, and transform human passion\ninto the likeness of divine love, is represented at a lower stage, not\nonly by the unifying action of speculative philosophy, but by the\ncombining force of art.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[5] The same thought may be found, in concrete and poetic form, in\nWordsworth's lines:\n\n\n                      \"And I have felt\n     A presence that disturbs me with the joy\n     Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime\n     Of something far more deeply interfused,\n     Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n     And the round ocean and the living air,\n     And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;\n     A motion and a spirit, that impels\n     All thinking things, all objects of all thought,\n     And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still\n     A lover of the meadows and the woods,\n     And mountains.\"\n\n\n\n\nF. THE ARTIST AS IDEALIZER\n\n\n6. The artist, even at his lowest level, is more than an imitator of\nimitations.[6] Abridgment, selection, combination, are the necessary\ninstruments of his craft; and by their aid he introduces harmony and\norder into the confused multiplicity of sensuous images. He substitutes\nfor the primary outward aspect of things a new view, in which thought\nalready finds a resting place. Just as strong emotion tends to make all\nknown existence the setting of a single form; just as intense meditation\nsees in all experience the manifestation of a single idea; so the\nartist, even if he be merely telling a story, or painting a common\nlandscape, puts some of his materials in a relief, and combines all in a\nharmony, which the untaught eye does not find in the world as it is. He\npresents to us the facts in the one case, the outward objects in the\nother, as already acted upon by thought and emotion. In this sense every\nartist, instead of copying nature, idealises it. In degree and mode,\nhowever, the idealisation varies infinitely in the various kinds of art.\nIt is by considering the height to which it is carried in the epic poem\nand the drama that we shall best appreciate its limitations in the\nnovel.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[6] Here are three beds: one existing in nature, which is\nmade by God, as I think that we may say--for no one else can be\nthe maker?--No.--There is another which is the work of the\ncarpenter?--Yes.--And the work of the painter is a third?--Yes?--Beds,\nthen, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend\nthem: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter?--Yes, there are three\nof them.--God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed in\nnature and one only; two or more such ideal beds neither ever have been\nnor ever will be made by God.... Shall we, then, speak of Him as the\nnatural author or maker of the bed?--Yes, he replied; inasmuch as by\nthe natural process of creation He is the author of this and of all\nother things.--And what shall we say of the carpenter--is he not\nalso the maker of the bed?--Yes.--But would you call the painter a\ncreator and maker?--Certainly not.--Yet if he is not the maker,\nwhat is he in relation to the bed?--I think, he said, that we may fairly\ndesignate him as the imitator of that which the others make.--Good, I\nsaid; then you call him who is third in the descent from nature an\nimitator?--Certainly, he said.--And the tragic poet is an imitator, and\ntherefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king\nand from the truth.--That appears to be so.--Plato, 'Republic,' X. 597.\n\n\n\n\nG. THE EPIC\n\n\n7. In outward form the epic poem is simply a narrative in verse.\nHistorically it seems to have originated in the records of ancestral\nheroism, which passed from mouth to mouth in metre, as the natural form\nof oral communication in an unlettered age. In the Iliad and Odyssey we\nfirst find this outward form penetrated by a new spirit, which converts\nthe narrative into the poem. There is no need to do violence to\nhistorical probability by supposing that Homer was a conscious artist,\nor that he imagined himself to be doing anything else than representing\nevents as they happened. We have simply to notice that in him facts have\nbecome poetry, and to ask ourselves what constitutes the change. How is\nit that the epic poet, while \"holding up the mirror to nature,\" yet\nshows us in the glass a glory which belongs not to nature as we see it,\nin its material limitations? The answer is, that though he follows the\nessential laws of the human spirit, his scene is not the earth we live\nin. He fills it with actors other than the men who \"hoard and sleep and\nfeed\" around us. He places the action either in heroic ages--in the\n\"past which was never present,\" when gods were more human and men more\ndivine--or in heavenly places, and among the powers of the air. The\naction is simple in proportion to its remoteness from the reality of\nlife, and rapid in proportion to its simplicity. It arises from the\noperation of the most elementary passions, the wrath of Achilles or the\npride of Satan, in collision with an overruling power. For the animal\nwants and tricks of fortune, which entangle the web of man's affairs, it\nhas no place. The animal element, if not banished from view altogether,\nbecomes merely the organ of the ruling motions of the spirit; and\nfortune is lost in destiny or providence. Thus the incidents of the\nnarrative cease to be mere incidents. They are held together by passion;\nthey are themselves, so to speak, manifestations of passion working with\nmore and more intensity to the final consummation. Not the laws which\nregulate curiosity, but those which regulate hope and awe, are the laws\nwhich they have to satisfy.\n\n\n\n\nH. TRAGEDY AS PURIFIER OF THE PASSIONS\n\n\n8. In tragedy, as the product of a more cultivated age, these\ncharacteristics appear more strongly than in the primitive epic. The\nHomeric poems are still legendary narratives, though narratives\nunconsciously transmuted by the highest art. Tragedy, on the contrary,\nhas no extraneous elements. It implies a conscious effort of the spirit,\nmade for its own sake, to re-create human life according to spiritual\nlaws; to transport itself from a world, where chance and appetite seem\nhourly to give the lie to its self-assertion, into one where it may work\nunimpeded by anything but the antagonism inherent in itself and the\npresence of an overruling law. This result is attained simply by the\naction of the proper instruments of thought, abstraction and synthesis.\nThe tragedian presents to us scenes of life, not its continuous flow of\nincident. In \"Macbeth,\" for instance, there is an hiatus of some years\nbetween the earlier and later acts;[7] but we are not sensible of the\nvoid; for the passions which lead to the catastrophe are but the\ndevelopment of those which appear at the beginning, and to the law\nagainst which they struggle \"a thousand years are but as yesterday.\"\nTime, however, is but one among many circumstances which the tragedian\nignores. The common facts of life as it is, and always must have been,\nthe influence of custom, the transition of passion into mechanical\nhabit, the impossibility of continuous effort, the necessary\narrangements of society, the wants of our animal nature and all that\nresults from them, these are excluded from view, and so much only of the\nmaterial of humanity is retained as can take its form from the action of\nthe spirit, and become a vehicle of pure passion. But the synthesis\nkeeps pace with the abstraction, for the tragedian creates not passions\nbut men. The outer garment, the flesh itself, is stript off from man,\nthat the spirit may be left to re-clothe itself, according to its proper\nimpulses and its proper laws. The false distinctions of dress, of\nmanner, of physiognomy, are obliterated, that the true individuality\nwhich results from the internal modifications of passion may be seen in\nclearer outline. These modifications are as infinite and as complex as\nthe spirit of man itself; and if the characters of the ancient\ndramatists, in their broad simplicity, fail to exhibit the finer\nlineaments of real life, yet in Shakespeare the variations of pure\npassion are as numerous and as subtle as those of the fleshly or\ncustomary mask by which man thinks that he knows his neighbour. The\nessential difference lies in the fact that they are variations of the\nspiritual, not the animal, man; that they arise from the qualifications\nof the spirit by itself, not from its intermixture with matter. It is\nthis which gives tragedy its power over life. The problem of the\ndiabolic nature, of the possibility of a \"fallen spirit,\" is not for\nman to solve. He may be satisfied with the diagnosis of his own disease,\nwith the knowledge that it is his littleness, not his greatness, that\nseparates him from the divine; that not intellectual pride, not\nspiritual self-assertion, but the meanness of his ordinary desires, the\ndegradation of his higher nature to the pursuit of animal ends, keep him\nunder the curse. From this curse tragedy, in its measure, helps to\nrelieve him. It \"purifies his passions\"[8] by extricating them from\ntheir earthly immersion. For an hour, it may be, or a day, it raises him\ninto a world of absolute ideality, where he may forget his wants and his\nvanity, and lose himself in a struggle in which the combatants are the\nforces of the spirit, and of which the end is that annihilation in\ncollision with destiny which is but the blank side of reconciliation\nwith it. And though his sojourn in this region be short, yet, when he\nfalls again, the smell of the divine fire has passed upon him, and he\nbears about him, for a time at least, among the rank vapours of the\nearth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the higher air.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[7] The actual time represented in the play has been calculated to be\nnine days, with intervals of a week or two between Acts II and III,\nscenes ii and iii of Act IV, and scenes i and ii of Act V. See _New\nShakespeare Society Publications_, 1877-79.\n\n[8] The phrase is Aristotle's; cf. the 'Poetics,' Chap. vi, and, for\ncomment, Butcher's 'Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art,' Chapter\nvi.\n\n\n\n\nI. TRAGEDY THE ELEVATION OF LIFE\n\n\n9. In this sense, then, tragedy satisfies its definition as \"the flight\nor elevation of life.\" The two indispensable supports which render this\nelevation possible, are metrical expression and great situations. \"In\nthe regeneration\" the language of the market-place and the morning call\nmay answer to the realised harmony of life; there may, indeed, be \"the\nfifth act of a tragedy in every death-bed;\" there may be no distinction\nof great or little, high or low. But it is an affectation to confound\nwhat shall be with what is. We cannot dissociate ordinary incidents from\nthe petty wants out of which they ordinarily spring, nor common language\nfrom the common-place thoughts which it usually expresses. The action in\ntragedy must be relative to the situation; and if the situation be one\nwhich we are unable to separate from matter-of-fact associations,\nneither can the action be so separated except by an effort which of\nitself depresses the soaring spirit. Nor, again, if the action be\nhigh-wrought, above the measure of man's ordinary activity, can it find\nexpression in the unrhythmical language[9] which corresponds to that\nordinary activity. New wine must not be put in old bottles; nor must the\nmotions of disenthralled passion be confined in vessels worn by the uses\nof daily life.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[9] The language of prose is not necessarily unrhythmical, nor is it\nalways commonplace, as witness, for example, the more moving and\nimaginative passages of the English Bible. On this point consult\nGummere's 'Beginnings of Poetry,' Chapter ii (Rhythm as the Essential\nFact of Poetry, especially pp. 56-60); Watts's article 'Poetry' in the\nEncyclopaedia Britannica; and the _Publications of the Modern Language\nAssociation_, xx. 4.\n\n\n\n\nJ. CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO TRAGEDY\n\n\n10. These considerations may explain to us why the production of a great\ntragedy is almost an impossibility in our own time. The age most\nfavourable to it would seem to be one in which men stand on the edge of\nan old and but half-known world--as Aeschylus and Sophocles stood on the\nedge of the mythologic, Shakespeare on that of the feudal world--an age\nof sufficient culture and reflection for men to be conscious of the\nglory they have left behind, while yet civilisation has not reached the\nstage of acquiescence in things as they are, and scepticism as to all\nbeyond them. Those great situations furnished by the mysterious past, in\nwhich passion quits the earth, soon lose their charm, and with the reign\nof wonder that of tragedy ceases. At Athens it gives place to the new\ncomedy, whose highest boast was to copy present life ([Greek: o Menandre\nkai Bie, poteros ar' humon poteron apemimesato];):[10] in modern Europe\nit has yielded to the novel.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[10] A saying of Aristophanes, the Grammarian, quoted by Syrianus on\nHermogenes, IV. 101. It may be translated: \"O Menander and Life! Which\nof you copies the other?\"\n\n\n\n\nII. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART\n\n\n\n\nA. BEGINNINGS OF THE NOVEL\n\n\n11. The novel in its proper shape did not come to the birth in England\ntill the time of Fielding and Richardson, but it had long been in\nprocess of formation. The seventeenth century at its close had lost the\ntragic impulse of its youth. The ecstatic hope of a new world, combined\nwith the sad and wondering recollection of the old, which had raised the\nhuman spirit to the height of the Shakesperian tragedy, had died out,\nand the age had become eminently satisfied with itself. Wits,\nphilosophers, and poets, alike were full of the present time. While the\nwits complimented each other on their superiority to the weaknesses of\nmankind, they made no scruple of indulging those weaknesses in their own\npersons. It was part of their business to do so, for it was part of\n\"life.\" The only difference between them and other men was that they\nwere weak and laughed over it, while others were weak and serious.\nPhilosophers congratulated themselves on their new enlightenment; but it\nwas an enlightenment which gave them insight into things as they are,\nnot as they are to be. \"The proper study of mankind,\" they held was\n\"man;\" man, however, not in his boundless promise, but in the mean\nperformance with which they proclaimed themselves satisfied. The poetry\nof the time was, at best, merely common-sense with ornamentation. It was\nneither lyrical nor tragic, though it may have tried to be both. It\nrepresented man neither as withdrawn into himself, nor as transported\ninto an ideal world of action, but as observing and reasoning on his\npresent affairs. The satire and moral essay were its characteristic\nforms.\n\n\n\n\nB. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SPECTATOR\n\n\n12. The most pleasing expression of this self-satisfaction of the age is\nfound in the _Spectator_, the first and best representative of that\nspecial style of literature--the only really popular literature of our\ntime--which consists in talking to the public about itself. Humanity is\ntaken as reflected in the ordinary life of men; and, as thus reflected,\nit is copied with the most minute fidelity. No attempt is made either to\nsuppress the baser elements of man's nature, or to transfigure them by a\nstronger light than that of the common understanding. No deeper laws are\nrecognised than those which vindicate themselves to the eye of daily\nobservation, no motives purer than the \"mixed\" ones which the practical\nphilosopher delights to analyse, no life higher than that which is\nqualified by animal wants. The reader never finds himself carried into a\nregion where it requires an effort to travel, or which is above the\nexisting level of opinion and morality. It is from this levelness with\nlife that the _Spectator_ derives its interest--an interest so nearly\nthe same, barring the absence of plot, with that of the novel, as to\nlead Macaulay to pronounce Addison \"the forerunner of the great English\nnovelists.\"[11] The elements of the novel, indeed, already existed in\nAddison's time, and only required combination. Fictitious biography,\nwhich may be regarded as its raw material, had been written by Defoe\nwith a life-like reality which has never since been equalled; and the\npopular drama furnished plots, in the shape of love stories drawn from\npresent life. Let the adventures of the fictitious biography, instead of\nbeing merely external to the man, as in Defoe, be made subservient to\nthat display of character in which Addison had shown himself a master,\nand let them become steps in the development of a love-plot, and the\nnovel--the novel of the last century, at any rate--is fully formed. As\nwas the self-contented, and therefore uncreative and prosaic, thought of\nthe age, which produced the novel, such the novel itself continued to\nbe. Man, comfortable and acquiescent, wished to amuse himself by a\nreflex of the life which he no longer aspired to transcend. He wanted to\nenjoy himself twice over--in act and in fancy; or, if the former were\ndenied him, at least to explore in fancy the world of pleasure and\nexcitement, of which circumstances abridged or disturbed his enjoyment\nin fact. In \"the smooth tale, generally of love,\"[12] the novelist\nsupplied the want.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[11] \"We have not the least doubt that, if Addison had written a novel,\non an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we\npossess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only as the\ngreatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the great\nEnglish novelists.\"--Macaulay, 'Life and writings of Addison.'\n\n[12] \"A small tale, generally of love.\"--Johnson's Dictionary.\n\n\n\n\nC. THE MODERN NOVEL A REFLECTION OF ORDINARY LIFE\n\n\n13. This Johnsonian definition may be objected to as merely accidental,\nand as inconsistent with the romantic character which the novel assumed\nin the hands of Sir Walter Scott. It expresses, however, adequately\nenough the view which the popular novelists prior to Scott took of their\nown productions. Cervantes, though in his own great work attaining that\nrhapsody of grotesqueness which lies on the edge of poetry, had yet\nestablished the idea of the novel as the antithesis of romance. These\nnovelists, accordingly, if they are not always telling the reader (like\nFielding), seem yet to be always thinking to themselves, how perfectly\nnatural their stories are. It is on this naturalness they pride\nthemselves; and naturalness, in their sense, meant conformity to nature\nas it is commonly seen. This is the characteristic feature of the class.\nWhether, like Richardson, they analyse character from within, or, like\nMiss Austen, develop it in the outward particularities of an unruffled\nlife--whether they describe, like Fielding, the buoyancy of a generous\nanimalism, or, like Miss Edgeworth and Miss Burney, the precise\ndecencies of conventional morality--they deal simply with\neighteenth-century life as seen by eighteenth-century eyesight. All\nromantic virtue, all idealised passion, they rigorously eschew. Prudence\nthey make the guide, happiness the end, of life. And they do well. They\nundertake to copy present life, and they do so. They have to reflect\nman's habitual consciousness; it is not for them to anticipate a\nconsciousness which has not yet been attained, or to represent man's\nlower nature as absorbed in a spiritual movement which, because we\ncannot arrest it, we habitually ignore. It is just their deficiency in\nthis respect which gives them their peculiar fascination. Man is not\nreally mere man, though he may think himself so. He is always something\npotentially, which he is not actually; always inadequate to himself; and\nas such, disturbed and miserable. The novel, on the contrary, represents\nhim as being what he vainly tries to be--adequate to himself. It offers\nto his imagination the full enjoyment of earthly life, unchallenged by\nobstinate surmises, untroubled by yearnings after the divine. Ordinary\nmen are satisfied with this enjoyment; the highest are allured by its\ntemptation. The \"reading public\" is charmed with the contemplation of\nits own likeness, \"twice as natural\" as life. Its own wisdom, its own\nwishes, its own vanity, are set before it in little with a completeness\nand finish which the deeper laws of the universe, vindicating themselves\nby apparent disorder and misfortune, happily prevent from being attained\nin real life.[13] It is thus pleasantly flattered into contentment with\nitself--a contentment not disturbed by the occasional censure of\npractices which good taste condemns as ungraceful, or prudence as\nprejudicial to happiness. But the man of keener insight, who, instead of\nwrestling with the riddle of life, seeks for a time to forget it, and\nto place in its stead the rounded representation of activity which the\nnovelist supplies, cannot but find the vanity of hiding his face from\nthe presence which he dreads. Out of heart with the world about\nhim--conscious of its actual meanness, and without vigor to re-cast it\nin the mould of his own thought--he fancies that after a sojourn in the\nworld of fiction he may come back braced for his struggle with life. In\nhis study, with a novel, he hopes to overlook the walls of his\nprison-house, to see the beginning and the end of human strife. But he\nsoon finds himself in the embrace of the very power which he sought to\nescape. Here is the world itself brought back to him. Here is a perfect\ncopy of that which in actual experience he sees but partially. The\nmirror is but too truly held up to nature. The getting and spending, the\nmarrying and giving in marriage, the dominion of fortune which makes\nlife a riddle, the prudential motives and worship of happiness which\nhide its divinity, these meet him here as they meet him in life,\nuntransmuted, unidealised. Yet the charm of art overcomes him. The\nperfectness of the representation, the skill with which the incidents\nare combined to result in a crowning happiness behind which no sorrow\nseems to lie, make him find a pleasure in the copy which he cannot find\nin actual life, when in personal and painful collision with it. But\nmeanwhile he gains no real strength, he readies no new height of\ncontemplation. He comes back to the world, as a man with a diseased\ndigestion, after living for a time on spiced meats, comes back to\nordinary food. He has not braced the assimilative power of his thought\nby a flight into the ideal world, or learnt even for a time to turn\n\"matter to spirit by sublimation strange.\" He has remained on the earth,\nand though his fancy has for the hour given the earth a charm, he is no\nbetter able than he was before to raise his eyes from its dead level, or\nremove the limits of its horizon.\n\n\n14. Thus, then, the old quarrel of the philosopher with the imitative\narts seems to be revived in respect of the novel. But though\nnovel-writers might be banished from a new republic,[14] it would not be\nas artists, but for the inferiority of their art. An artist indeed the\nnovelist is; he combines events and persons with reference to ends; he\nconcentrates into a dialogue of a few sentences an amount of feeling and\ncharacter which it would take real men some hours to express; he imparts\na rapidity to the stream of incident quite unlike the sluggishness of\nour daily experience. In this sense he does not copy what we see, but\nshows us what we can not see for ourselves. Our complaint against him is\nthat the aspect of things which he shows us is merely the outward and\nnatural, as opposed to the inner or ideal. His answer would probably be\neither that the ideal, in any sense in which it can be opposed to the\nnatural, must be false and delusive; or that it is merely an accident of\nnovel-writing, as hitherto practised, and not anything essential to this\nspecies of composition, which has prevented it from exhibiting the\nhighest aspect of things; or, finally, that admitting the view which the\nnovel presents to be necessarily lower than the poetic, it yet is a more\nuseful view for man to contemplate.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[13] This rather obscure phrase may be interpreted as follows: The\naverage man would like to live such a rounded and symmetrical life as is\nportrayed in the novel. He would like to see his wisdom justifying\nitself, his vanity triumphant, his selfishness achieving its end; and he\nthinks that his cravings are being satisfied. But the deeper laws of the\nuniverse will not be balked, they are lying in wait. And presently when\nhe thinks, good easy man, his little bourgeois world is rounding into\nthe perfect sphere, they spring up in his path, shatter his sugar-candy\nparadise, and ruthlessly vindicate themselves (that is, prove that they\ncannot be disregarded, that they must be reckoned with) by bringing into\nhis life disorder and misfortune.\n\n[14] As poets were from the republic of Plato. \"When any one of these\npantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything,\ncomes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we\nwill fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being;\nbut we must also inform him that in our state such as he are not\npermitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have\nanointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we\nshall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our\nsouls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will\nimitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models\nwhich we prescribed at first when we began the education of our\nsoldiers.\"--Plato, 'Republic,' III. 398.\n\n\n\n\nD. NATURALISM vs. IDEALISM\n\n\n15. Much fruitless controversy between naturalism and idealism in art\nmight have been saved by a consideration of the true character of the\nantithesis. It becomes unmeaning as soon as nature is expanded to the\nfulness of the idea. And so expanded it may be, for, according to the\nold formula, it is always in flux. It is never in being, always in\nbecoming. As has been already pointed out, it is what we see; and we see\naccording to higher and lower laws of vision. We may look at man and the\nworld either from without or from within. We may observe man's actions\nlike other phenomena, and from observation learn to ascribe them to\ncertain general but distinct motives and faculties, which we do not\nrefer to any higher unity; or, on the other hand, by the light of our\nown consciousness we may recognise that in man of which no observation\nof his actions could tell us--something which is in him, but yet is not\nhis own; which combines with all his faculties, but is none of them;\nwhich gives them a unity, to which their diversity is merely relative.\nSo again with regard to the phenomena of the world; we may look on these\neither simply as phenomena, or as manifestations of destiny or divine\nwill. The former view of man and the world we may conveniently call\n_natural_, because the only view that mere observation can give us; the\nlatter _ideal_, because making observation posterior to something given\nin thought.\n\n\n\n\nE. TRAGEDY AND THE NOVEL\n\n\n16. The tragedian, then, idealises, because he starts from within. He\nreaches, as it were, the central fire, in the heat of which every\nseparate faculty, every animal want, every fortuitous incident is\nmelted down and lost. We never could observe in actual experience\npassion such as Lear's, or meditation such as Hamlet's, fusing\neverything else into itself. Facts at every step would interfere to\nprevent such a possibility. But let us place ourselves, by the poet's\nhelp, within the soul of Lear or Hamlet, and we shall be able to follow\nthe process by which the spiritual power, taking the form of passion in\nthe one, and of thought in the other, and working outwards, draws\neverything into its own unity, according to the same activity of which,\nhowever impeded by the \"imperfections of matter,\" we are conscious in\nourselves. The incidents of the tragedy are wholly subordinate, issuing\neither from this spiritual energy of the actors on the one hand, or, on\nthe other, from destiny, to whose throne the poet penetrates. They thus\npresent an aspect entirely different from that of events which we\napproach from without. The novel, on the contrary, starts from the\noutside. Its main texture is a web of incidents through which the\nmotions of the spirit must be discerned, if discerned at all. These\nincidents must be probable, must be such as are consistent with the\nobserved sequences of the world. The view of man, therefore, which we\nattain through them, can only be that which is attainable by observation\nof outward actions and events; or, in other words, according to the\ndistinction which we have attempted to establish, it is the natural\nview, not the ideal. Its character corresponds to its origin.\nObservation shows us man not as self-determined, but as the creature of\ncircumstances, as a phenomenon among other phenomena. As such, too, he\nis presented to us in the novel. We do not see him, as in tragedy,\nstanding in the strength of his own spirit, remaking the world by its\npower, determined by it for good or evil, dependent on it for all that\nmay be attractive or repellent about him. The hero of a novel attracts\nin part by his physiognomy, his manner, or even his dress; his character\nis qualified by circumstances and society; his impulses vary according\nto the impressions of outward things; he is the sport of fortune,\ndependent for weal or woe on the acquisition of some external blessing\nwhich the development of the plot may or may not bestow on him. As\ncircumstances make his life what it is, so the particular combination of\ncircumstances, called happiness, constitutes its end. Instead of losing\nhis merely personal and particular self, as in the catastrophe of a\ntragedy, he satisfies it with its appropriate pleasure. \"He that loveth\nwife or children more than me, is not worthy of me,\" are the words of\nthe Author of the Christian life. \"Marry, enjoy domestic bliss, and thou\nhast attained the end of virtue\"--such is the ordinary moral of the\nordinary novel; nay, the only consistent moral of the consistent novel.\nAs the novelist sows, so must he reap; as his plot is, such must its\nconsummation be. In the body of the work he must, from the nature of the\ncase, represent men as they appear in fact, and he cannot fitly round it\noff by representing them as they are only in idea. He cannot step at\npleasure from one sphere of art to another; by attempting to do so he\ndestroys the harmony without which there is no art at all, and leaves us\nwith a sense of dissatisfaction and unreality. The reader, who through\nthe whole three volumes till close upon the end has been travelling in\nan atmosphere of ordinary morality and every-day aspiration, knows not\nhow in the last chapter to breathe the air of a higher life.\n\n\n\n\nF. THE EPIC AND THE NOVEL\n\n\n17. It may be objected to this limitation of the capabilities of the\nnovel, that it must stand on the same footing with the epic poem, which\nis no less made up of a texture of incident, and which, therefore,\naccording to the present argument, can only reach the springs of man's\nactions from without. Such an objection has some truth with reference to\nthe Homeric poems. These, as we have seen, have the legendary narrative\nfor their primitive element, and in so far as they are merely a reflex\nof Greek life in the Homeric age, their interest is that of a novel, not\nproperly of the epic. The true epic (of which the \"Paradise Lost\" would\nseem to be a less mixed form than the Iliad or Odyssey), no less than\ntragedy, seizes the idea of a self-determined spirit on the one hand,\nand of destiny or divine law on the other. These are the primary springs\nfrom which it makes action and incident issue, with a perfect\nsubordination which the laws of our lower nature and of social life must\nprevent from being realised in the world of experience, and which the\nnovelist therefore, tied down to the world of experience, only offends\nus by attempting to exhibit. The essential character of the novel is not\nchanged by its assumption of the form of a romance. In the romantic\nworld of the middle ages, the great Italian poets did indeed find their\nmaterials. To their eyes it was a world in which hope and wonder might\nroam at large: it furnished actions which, glorified by them, became\nmanifestations of the divine and heroic in man. But it is another world\nas seen by the novelist, even by such a one as Walter Scott. The\nromantic life which he depicts is simply the life which we see our own\nneighbors live, with more picturesque situations, with more to excite\ncuriosity in the reader, and activity in the imaginary hero. We gain\nmore from him, it is true, than from those copies of the too familiar\nfaces around us which are the staple commodity in novels of the day. He\nat least carries us into scenes of adventure, where we may forget the\n\"smooth tale\" of our nineteenth-century life. But further he cannot go,\nfor he approaches men from without. He does not reach, by other methods\nthan observation, to any _a priori_ affection of the spirit, and to this\nsubordinate incident. Had he done so, he could not have uttered himself\nin the language of common life. In the world of heroes or angels,\n_i.e._, of men idealised, to which the epic poet raises us, he sustains\nus by the power of verse. The exalted action and the poetic expression\nare as essentially correlative in the epic, as are the natural incident\nand the prosaic expression in the novel.\n\n\n\n\nG. POETRY AND PROSE\n\n\n18. The hostility of Wordsworth to the \"poetic diction\" of his\ntime rested on principles of which he scarcely seems himself to\nhave been conscious.[15] The poets of the last century had lost the\ngenuine sense of their high calling. Their productions for the most part\nwere, at best, practical philosophy in verse. They observed the outer\naspect of things, and to make their observations poetry they clothed\nthem in \"poetic diction,\" which thus became offensive, because\nartificial--because a superadded ornament, and not the natural\nexpression of exalted passion or the emotion which accompanies our\npassage \"behind the veil.\" Repugnance to this artificiality misled\nWordsworth into the celebrated assertion that \"between the language of\nprose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be,\nany essential difference:\" an assertion which, as prompted by a feeling\nof the incompatibility of poetic language with prosaic thought, is\nreally a witness to the essential antithesis between poetry and prose.\nVerse is simple, harmonious, and unfamiliar. It is thus the fitting\norgan for that energy of thought which simplifies the phenomena of life\nby referring them to a spiritual principle; which blends its shifting\ncolours in the light of a master-passion, and passes from the\ncontradictory data of the common understanding to the unity of a deeper\nconsciousness. Even the spiritualist philosopher, no less than the poet,\nwould have to speak in verse, if, instead of making statements, he\nportrayed: if, besides asserting that \"all things are to be seen in\nGod,\" he sought to excite in the reader the emotion appropriate to the\nsight. Prose is the \"oratio soluta.\" It is complex, irregular,\ninharmonious. It thus corresponds to the natural or phenomenal view of\nlife; the view of it, that is, in its diversity, as qualified in\ninnumerable modes by animal wants and apparent accident, and not\nharmonised by the action of the spirit.[16] The novelist must express\nhimself in prose, because this is his view of life: and this must be his\nview of life, because he thus expresses himself. It is indeed a view\nwhich may vary according to the circumstances of the case, but only\nwithin definite limits. There is an \"earnestness\" about some of our\nmodern novelists, Miss Bronte for instance, which would have seemed out\nof place to those of fifty years ago; but this is merely because the\nlife they see around them is more \"earnest.\" It presents to them scenes\nof sterner significance than were to be found among the coquetry and\ndissipation of the fashionable world or the dull courtesies of a country\nhouse. But that they do not transcend this outward life we have one\ncrucial proof. Just in so far as each of us learns to regard his own\nindividual being from within, and not from without, does he discard\ndependence on happiness as arising from external circumstances, and\nbecomes already in idea, as he tends to become in reality, his own world\nand his own law. No novelist attains to the assertion of this spiritual\nprerogative. As we follow in sympathy the story of his hero, we find\nourselves lifted up and cast down as fortune changes, our life\nbrightening as the clouds break above, and darkening as they close\nagain. If the author chooses to disappoint us with \"a bad ending,\" he\nleaves us, not as we are left at the conclusion of a tragedy, purified\nfrom personal desires, but vexed and sorrowful, sadder but not wiser\nmen.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[15] \"Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that\ncondition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in\nwhich they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and\nspeak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of\nlife our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity,\nand, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more\nforcibly communicated.... The language, too, of these men has been\nadopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from\nall lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust), because such men\nhourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of\nlanguage is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society\nand the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less\nunder the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and\nnotions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a\nlanguage arising out of repeated experience and regular feeling, is a\nmore permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which\nis frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are\nconferring honor upon themselves and their art in proportion as they\nseparate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary\nand capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle\ntastes and fickle appetites of their own creation.\"--Wordsworth, Preface\nto the 'Lyrical Ballads.'\n\n[16] On the relations of prose and poetry, see Alden's 'An introduction\nto Poetry,' pp. 23-28, 128-138, 160-164, and the references there given.\n\n\n\n\nH. THE NOVEL AN INCOMPLETE PRESENTATION OF LIFE\n\n\n19. By the mere explanation of the difference between the ideal and the\nnatural, the poetic and novelistic, views of the world, we may seem to\nhave already settled the question as to the beneficial effects of each.\nThe question, be it observed, is not as to the comparative influence of\nthe discipline of art and that of real life. The man who seeks his\nentire culture in art of any kind will soon find the old antagonism\nbetween speculation and action begin to appear. There will be a chasm,\nwhich he cannot fill, between his life in the closet and his life in the\nworld; his impotence to carry his thought into act will limit and weaken\nthe thought itself. But this ill result will equally ensue, whether the\nart in which he finds his nurture be that of the novelist or that of the\npoet. The novel-reader sees human action pass before him like a\npanorama, but he feels none of its pains and penalties; his fancy feeds\non its pleasures, but he has not to face the struggle of resistance to\npleasure, or the suffering which follows on indulgence. Nor is it merely\nfrom that weakness of effect which, in one sense, must always belong to\nrepresentation as opposed to reality, that the novel suffers. The\nrepresentation itself is incomplete. The novelist, like every other\nartist, must abridge and select. For many of the elements whose action\nbuilds up our human soul, there is no place in his canvas. A great part\nof the discipline of life arises simply from its slowness. The long\nyears of patient waiting and silent labor, the struggle with\nlistlessness and pain, the loss of time by illness, the hope deferred,\nthe doubt that lays hold on delay--these are the tests of that\npertinacity in man which is but a step below heroism. The exhibition of\nthem in the novel, however, is prevented by that rapidity of movement\nwhich is essential to its fascination; and hence to one whose\nacquaintance with life was derived simply from novels, its main business\nwould be unknown. They are perhaps more brought home to us by Defoe than\nby any other writer of fiction; but this is due to that very deficiency\nof artistic power which makes his agglomeration of details[17] such\nheavy reading to all but school-boys.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[17] Modern criticism inclines to the view that Defoe's \"agglomeration\nof details\" is the result of high and conscious art. If 'Robinson\nCrusoe' were kept away from schoolboys it would doubtless be read\npleasurably by adults.\n\n\n\n\nI. PRUDENCE THE NOVELIST'S HIGHEST MORALITY\n\n\n20. The novel, then, as being a work of art, must fail to teach the\nlesson of life in its completeness: as an inferior work of art, it has\npeculiar weaknesses of its own. However extensive the influence of the\nliterature of fiction may have been, its intensity has been in inverse\nproportion. A great poem, once made our own, abides with us for ever.\n\n\n                 \"Amid the fretful stir\n     Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,\"[18]\n\n\nthe spirit, returning to it, may gain a fresh assurance of its _own_\nbirthright, and purify itself, as in a river of Lethe, for an ideal\ntransition to its proper home. The novel, itself the reflex of \"the\nfretful stir unprofitable,\" can exercise no such power. It can but make\nus more at home in the region from which a great poem transports us. The\nvalue of that experience of the world, which it is its object to impart,\nis commonly overrated in our day. In the form in which it is imparted by\nthe novelist, we have perhaps had too much of it without his aid. Our\nexternal environment is quite enough in our thoughts: we are not too\nreluctant to admit that we are what we seem to be, dependent for good or\nevil on circumstances which we do not make for ourselves. This\ndependence is in itself, no doubt, a fact; but it ceases to be so for us\nwhen we contemplate it in forgetfulness of that spring of potential\nfreedom which underlies it, and of the law of duty correlative to\nfreedom. To the exclusive consideration of it we owe those profitless\nrecipes for eliciting moral health from circumstances which are the\nplague of modern literature, and which one of our ablest writers has\nlately condescended to dispense, in an essay on \"organisation in daily\nlife.\" This circumstantial view of life, if we may use the term, being\nthe only one that the novelist can convey, prudence is his highest\nmorality. But it may be doubted whether prudence is what any one has\ngreat need to learn. The plain man, who fronting circumstances boldly on\nthe one hand, looks reverently to the stern face of duty on the other,\ncan dispense with its maxims. For the moral valetudinarian small benefit\nis to be gained from a doctor who will\n\n\n     \"Read each wound, each weakness clear,\n     Will strike his finger on the place\n     And say, 'Thou ailest here and here'.\"[19]\n\n\nIt is far better for him, instead of poring over a detail of the causes\nand symptoms of the disease which he hugs, to be stimulated to an effort\nin which, though it be but temporary, ecstatic, and for an end not\nactually attainable, he may at least forget the disease altogether. Such\na stimulus a great poem may afford him; but in the whole expanse of\nnovel-literature he merely sees his own sickly experience modified in an\ninfinite variety of reflections, till he fancies that the \"strange\ndisease of modern life\" is the proper constitution of God's universe.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[18]\n\n                 \"When the fretful stir\n     Unprofitable, and the fever of the world\n     Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.\"\n                    --Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey.'\n\n[19] Matthew Arnold's 'Memorial Verses,' lines 20-22, adapted to the\ncontext.\n\n\n\n\nJ. EVIL EFFECTS OF NOVEL-READING\n\n\n21. Novel-reading thus aggravates two of the worst maladies of modern\ntimes, self-consciousness and want of reverence. Many a man in these\ndays, instead of doing some sound piece of work for mankind, spends his\ntime in explaining to himself why it is that he does not do it, and how,\nafter all, he is superior to those who do. Even men of a higher sort\nnever seem to forget themselves in their work. Our popular writers\ngenerally take the reader into confidence as to their private feelings\nas they go along; our men of action are burdened by a sense of their\nreputation with \"intelligent circles.\" No one loses himself in a cause.\nScarcely understanding what is meant by a \"divine indifference\" as to\nthe fate of individual existences in the evolution of God's plan, we\nweary heaven with complaints that we find the world contrary, or that we\ncannot satisfy ourselves with a theory of life. Thus \"measuring\nourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, we are\nnot wise.\" The novel furnishes the standard for the measurement, and the\ndata for the comparison. It presents us with a series of fictitious\nexperiences, in the light of which we read our own, and become more\ncritically conscious of them. Instead of idealising life, if we may so\nexpress ourselves, it sentimentalises it. It does not subordinate\nincidents to ideas; yet it does not treat them simply as phenomena to\nexcite curiosity, but as misfortunes or blessings to excite sentiment.\nThe writer of the \"Mill on the Floss\" reaches almost the tragic pitch\ntowards the close of her book, and if she had been content to leave us\nwith the death of the heroine and her brother[20] in the flood, we\nmight have supposed that in this case, as representing the annihilation\nof human passion in the struggle with destiny, the novelist had indeed\nattained the ideal view of life. But the novelistic instinct does not\nallow her to do so. At the conclusion we are shown the other chief\nactors standing, with appropriate emotions, over the heroine's grave,\nand thus find that the catastrophe has not really been the manifestation\nof an idea, but an occasion of sentiment. The habitual novel-reader,\nfrom thus looking sentimentally at the fictitious life which is the\nreflex of his own, soon comes to look sentimentally at himself. He\nthinks his personal joys and sorrows of interest to angels and men; and\ninstead of gazing with awe and exultation upon the world, as a theatre\nfor the display of God's glory and the unknown might of man, he sees in\nit merely an organism for affecting himself with pains and pleasures.\nThus regarded, it must needs lose its claim on his reverence, for it is\nnarrowed to the limits of his own consciousness. Conversant with present\nlife in all its outward aspects, he forgets the infinite spaces which\nlie around and above it. This confinement of view, which among the more\nintelligent appears merely as disbelief in the possibilities of man,\ntakes a more offensive form in the complacent blindness of ordinary\nminds. We have no wish to disparage our own age in comparison with any\nthat have preceded it. Young men have always been ignorant, and\nignorance has always been conceited. There is, however, this difference.\nThe ignorant young men of past time, such as the five sons of Sir\nHildebrand Osbaldistone,[21] knew that they were ignorant, but thought\nit no shame: the ignorant young men of our days, with the miscellaneous\nknowledge of life which they derive from the popular novelists, fancy\nthemselves wiser than the aged. Whoever be the philosopher, the coxcomb\nnowadays will answer him not merely with a grin, but with a joke which\nhe has still in lavender from Dickens or his imitators. The comic aspect\nof life is indeed plain enough to see, nor is the merely pathetic much\nless obvious; but there is little good in looking at either. It is far\neasier to laugh or to weep than to think; to give either a ludicrous or\nsentimental turn to a great principle of morals or religion than to\nenter into its real meaning. But the vulgar reader of our comic\nnovelists, when he has learnt from them a jest or a sentiment for every\noccasion of life, fancies that nothing more remains unseen and unsaid.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[20] \"Lover\" in the original text of the essay. The error does not much\naffect the argument.\n\n[21] In Scott's 'Rob Roy.'\n\n\n\n\nIII. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL\n\n\n\n\nA. A WIDENER OF EXPERIENCE\n\n\n22. But there is another side to this question which we must not allow\nourselves to overlook. We have shown what the novel cannot do, and its\nill effect on those who trust to it for their culture. We must not\nforget that it has a proper work of its own which, if modern progress be\nanything more than a euphemism, must be a work for good. Least of all\nshould it be depreciated by the student, who may find in it deliverance\nfrom the necessary confinement of his actual life. For the production of\npoetic effect, as we have seen, large abstraction is necessary. It is\nwith man in the purity of his inward being, with nature in its simple\ngreatness, that the poet deals. The glory which he casts on life is far\nhigher than any which the novelist knows, but it is only on certain of\nthe elements of life that it can be cast at all. The novelist works on a\nfar wider field. With choice of subject and situation he scarcely need\ntrouble himself, except in regard to his own intellectual\nqualifications. Wherever human thought is free, and human character can\ndisplay itself, whether in the servants' hall or the drawing-room,\nwhether in the country mansion or the back alley, he may find his\nmaterials. He is thus a great expander of sympathies; and if he cannot\nhelp us to make the world our own by the power of ideas, he at least\ncarries our thought into many a far country of human experience, which\nit could not otherwise have reached. We hear much in these days of the\nsacrifice of the individual to society through professional limitations.\nIn the progressive division of labor, while we become more useful as\ncitizens, we seem to lose our completeness as men. The requirements of\nspecial study become more exacting, at the same time that the perfect\norganisation of modern society removes the excitement of adventure and\nthe occasion for independent effort. There is less of human interest to\ntouch us within our calling, and we have less leisure to seek it beyond.\nHence it follows that one who has made the most of his profession is apt\nto feel that he has not attained his full stature as a man; that he has\nfaculties which he can never use, capacities for admiration and\naffection which can never meet with an adequate object. To this feeling,\nprobably, are mainly due our lamentations over a past age of\nhero-worship and romance, when action was more decisive and passion a\nfuller stream. Its alleviation, if not its remedy, is to be found in the\nnewspaper and the novel. Every one indeed must lay in his own experience\nthe foundation of the imaginary world which he rears for himself. There\nis a primary \"virtue which cannot be taught.\" No man can learn from\nanother the meaning of human activity or the possibilities of human\nemotion. But this [Greek: pou sto] being given, even the cloistered\nstudent may find that, as his soul passes into the strife of social\nforces and the complication of individual experience, which the\nnewspaper and the novel severally represent, his sympathies break from\nthe bondage of his personal situation and reach to the utmost confines\nof human life. The personal experience and the fictitious act and react\non each other, the personal experience giving reality to the fictitious,\nthe fictitious expansion to the personal. He need no longer envy the man\nof action and adventure, or sigh for new regions of enterprise. The\nworld is all before him. He may explore its recesses without being\ndisturbed by its passions; and if the end of experience be the knowledge\nof God's garment, as preliminary to that of God Himself, his eye may be\nas well trained for the \"vision beatific,\" as if he had himself been an\nactor in the scenes to which imagination transfers him.\n\n\n\n\nB. AN EXPANDER OF SYMPATHIES\n\n\n23. The novelist not only works on more various elements, he appeals to\nmore ordinary minds than the poet. This indeed is the strongest\npractical proof of his essential inferiority as an artist. All who are\ncapable of an interest in incidents of life which do not affect\nthemselves, may feel the same interest more keenly in a novel; but to\nthose only who can lift the curtain does a poem speak intelligibly. It\nis the twofold characteristic, of universal intelligibility and\nindiscriminate adoption of materials, that gives the novel its place as\nthe great reformer and leveller of our time. Reforming and levelling are\nindeed more closely allied than we are commonly disposed to admit.\nSocial abuses are nearly always the result of defective organisation.\nThe demarcations of family, of territory, or of class, prevent the\nproper fusion of parts into the whole. The work of the reformer\nprogresses as the social force is brought to bear more and more fully on\nclasses and individuals, merging distinctions of privilege and position\nin the one social organism. The novel is one of the main agencies\nthrough which this force acts. It gathers up manifold experiences,\ncorresponding to manifold situations of life; and subordinating each to\nthe whole, gives to every particular situation a new character, as\nqualified by all the rest. Every good novel, therefore, does something\nto check what may be called the despotism of situations; to prevent that\nossification into prejudices arising from situation, to which all feel a\ntendency. The general novel literature of any age may be regarded as an\nassertion by mankind at large, in its then development, of its claims,\nas against the influence of class and position; whether that influence\nappear in the form of positive social injustice, of oppressive custom,\nor simply of deficient sympathy.\n\n24. To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large powers of\nsympathetic observation. He must have an eye for the \"humanities\" which\nunderlie the estranging barriers of social demarcation, and in relation\nto which the influence of those barriers can alone be rightly\nappreciated. We have already spoken of that acquiescence in the dominion\nof circumstance, to which we are all too ready to give way, and which\nexclusive novel-reading tends to foster. The circumstances, however,\nwhose rule we recognise, are apt to be merely our own or those of our\nclass. We are blind to other \"idola\" than those of our own cave; we do\nnot understand that the feelings which betray us into \"indiscretions\"\nmay, when differently modified by a different situation, lead others to\ngame-stealing or trade-outrages. From this narrowness of view the\nnovelist may do much to deliver us. The variations of feeling and\naction with those of circumstance, and the essential human identity\nwhich these variations cannot touch, are his special province. He shows\nus that crime does not always imply sin, that a social heresy may be the\nassertion of a native right, that an offence which leads to conventional\noutlawry may be merely the rebellion of a generous nature against\nconventional tyranny. Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much.\nThough he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at least gives\na more adequate conception of its surface. Though he cannot raise us to\na point of view from which circumstances appear subordinate to spiritual\nlaws, he yet saves us from being blinded, if not from being influenced,\nby the circumstances of our own position. Though he cannot show the\nprisoners the way of escape from their earthly confinement, yet by\nbreaking down the partitions between the cells he enables them to\ncombine their strength for a better arrangement of the prison-house. The\nmost wounding social wrongs more often arise from ignorance than from\nmalice, from acquiescence in the opinion of a class rather than from\ndeliberate selfishness. The master cannot enter into the feelings of the\nservant, nor the servant into those of his master. The master cannot\nunderstand how any good quality can lead one to \"forget his station\"; to\nthe servant the spirit of management in the master seems mere\n\"driving.\" This is only a sample of what is going on all society over.\nThe relation between the higher and lower classes becomes irritating,\nand therefore injurious, not from any conscious unfairness on either\nside, but simply from the want of a common understanding; while at the\nsame time every class suffers within its own limits from the prevalence\nof habits and ideas, under the authority of class-convention, which\ncould not long maintain themselves if once placed in the light of\ngeneral opinion. Against this twofold oppression, the novel, from its\nfirst establishment as a substantive branch of literature, has made\nvigorous war. From Defoe to Kingsley its history boasts of a noble army\nof social reformers; yet the work which these writers have achieved has\nhad little to do with the morals--commonly valueless, if not false and\nsentimental--which they have severally believed themselves to convey.\nDefoe's notion of a moral seems to have been the vulgar one that vice\nmust be palpably punished and virtue rewarded; he recommends his \"Moll\nFlanders\" to the reader on the ground that \"there is not a wicked action\nin any part of it but is first or last rendered unhappy and[22]\nunfortunate.\" The moral of Fielding's novels, if moral it can be called,\nis simply the importance of that prudence which his heroes might have\ndispensed with, but for the wildness of their animal license. Yet both\nDefoe and Fielding had a real lesson to teach mankind. The thieves and\nharlots whom Defoe prides himself on punishing, but whose adventures he\ndescribes with the minuteness of affection, are what we ourselves might\nhave been; and in their histories we hear, if not the \"music,\" yet the\n\"harsh and grating cry\" of suffering humanity. Fielding's merit is of\nthe same kind; but the sympathies which he excites are more general, as\nhis scenes are more varied, than those of Defoe. His coarseness is\neverywhere redeemed by a genuine feeling for the contumelious buffets to\nwhich weakness is exposed. He has the practical insight of Dickens and\nThackeray, without their infusion of sentiment. He does not moralise\nover the contrast between the rich man's law and the poor man's, over\nthe \"indifference\" of rural justice, over the lying and adultery of\nfashionable life. He simply makes us see the facts, which are everywhere\nunder our eyes, but too close to us for discernment. He shows society\nwhere its sores lie, appealing from the judgment of the diseased class\nitself to that public intelligence which, in spite of the cynic's sneer\non the task of \"producing an honesty from the combined action of\nknaves,\" has really power to over-ride private selfishness. The same\nsermon has found many preachers since, the unconscious missionaries\nbeing perhaps the greatest. Scott was a Tory of the purest water. His\nmind was busy with the revival of a pseudo-feudalism: no thought of\nreforming abuses probably ever entered it. Yet his genial human insight\nmade him a reformer against his will. He who makes man better known to\nman takes the first steps toward healing the wounds which man inflicts\non man. The permanent value of Scott's novels lies in his pictures of\nthe Scotch peasantry. He popularised the work which the Lake poets had\nbegun, of re-opening the primary springs of human passion. \"Love he had\nfound in huts where poor men lie,\" and he announced the discovery;\nteaching the \"world\" of English gentry what for a century and a half\nthey had seemed to forget, that the human soul, in its strength no less\nthan in its weakness, is independent of the accessories of fortune. He\nleft no equals, but the combined force of his successors has been\nconstantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done more\nthan the journalists to produce that improvement in the organisation of\nmodern life which leads to the notion that, because social grievances\nare less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The novelist catches the\ncry of suffering before it has obtained the strength, or general\nrecognition, which are pre-supposed when the newspaper becomes its\nmouthpiece. The miseries of the marriage-market had been told by\nThackeray, with almost wearisome iteration, many years before they found\nutterance in the columns of the \"Times.\"\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[22] \"Or\" in Green's text.\n\n\n\n\nC. A CREATOR OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT\n\n\n25. It may indeed be truly said that, after all, human selfishness is\nmuch the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sympathy; that\nriches and poverty have still their old estranging influence. The novel,\nas has been shown, cannot give a new birth to the spirit, or initiate\nthe effort to transcend the separations of place and circumstance; but\nit is no small thing that it should remove the barriers of ignorance and\nantipathy which would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It at\nleast brings man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to see\nitself as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympathies\nthus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression of\nany kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by the\ntyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain.\n\n\n\n\nD. A LEVELLER OF INTELLECTS\n\n\n26. The novelist is a leveller also in another sense than that of which\nwe have already spoken. He helps to level intellects as well as\nsituations. He supplies a kind of literary food which the weakest\nnatures can assimilate as well as the strongest, and by the consumption\nof which the former sort lose much of their weakness and the latter\nmuch of their strength. While minds of the lower order acquire from\nnovel-reading a cultivation which they previously lacked, the higher\nseem proportionately to sink. They lose that aspiring pride which arises\nfrom the sense of walking in intellect on the necks of a subject crowd;\nthey no longer feel the bracing influence of living solely among the\nhighest forms of art; they become conformed insensibly, to the general\nopinion which the new literature of the people creates. A similar change\nis going on in every department of man's activity. The history of\nthought in its artistic form is parallel to its history in its other\nmanifestations. The spirit descends, that it may rise again; it\npenetrates more and more widely into matter, that it may make the world\nmore completely its own. Political life seems no longer attractive, now\nthat political ideas and power are disseminated among the mass, and the\nreason is recognised as belonging not to a ruling caste merely, but to\nall. A statesman in a political society resting on a substratum of\nslavery, and admitting no limits to the province of government, was a\nvery different person from the modern servant of \"a nation of\nshopkeepers,\" whose best work is to save the pockets of the poor. It\nwould seem as if man lost his nobleness when he ceased to govern, and as\nif the equal rule of all was equivalent to the rule of none. Yet we\nhold fast to the faith that the \"cultivation of the masses,\" which has\nfor the present superseded the development of the individual, will in\nits maturity produce some higher type even of individual manhood than\nany which the old world has known. We may rest on the same faith in\ntracing the history of literature. In the novel we must admit that the\ncreative faculty has taken a lower form than it held in the epic and the\ntragedy. But since in this form it acts on more extensive material and\nreaches more men, we may well believe that this temporary declension is\npreparatory to some higher development, when the poet shall idealise\nlife without making abstraction of any of its elements, and when the\nsecret of existence, which he now speaks to the inward ear of a few, may\nbe proclaimed on the house-tops to the common intelligence of mankind.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\n\n\nA. AN APPRECIATION OF GREEN'S ESSAY\n\n\nIt is interesting to see how the leading ideas in his [Green's] mind\ngoverned the treatment of an apparently alien material in his last piece\nof academic work, the essay on novels, which gained the Chancellor's\nprize in 1862. The essay has also the additional interest of being\nalmost the only record of his views on art and its relation to life. The\nfundamental conception upon which it is based is one with which we have\nalready met. The world in its truth is a unity, governed by a single\nlaw, animated by an undivided life, a whole in every part. But to human\napprehension it is fragmentary and mechanical, a chaos of elements of\nwhich each is external to the other and all are external to our minds,\nand in which chance tempered by familiarity seems to be the only law. To\nexceptional men, or at exceptional crises in life, in the moments of\nintense insight or emotion which philosophy calls knowledge and religion\nfaith, the weight of custom falls away, the truth breaks through the\nveil, and the most trivial object or accident comes to reflect in\nitself the whole system of nature or the whole providence of God. At\nsuch moments man realises that in order to live he must die, that in\norder to be free he must obey, and that only by surrendering his fancied\nindependence can he enter into the divine unity. To this liberation of\nthe self from its own bondage art contributes its share. The poetic\ngenius, like the speculative and the religious, penetrates the\nmonotonous disorder of everyday life, and lays bare \"the impassioned\nexpression\" which is there for those who can read it. The dramatist, for\ninstance, with whom the novelist is here compared, shows us some\nelemental force of humanity, stripped of the accidents of time and\nplace, working itself out in free conflict with other forces, and\nfinally breaking itself against the eternal fact that no man can gain\nthe world without first losing himself. It is this catastrophe which\nmakes the real tragedy of life; it is this which the tragic poet has the\neye to see and the words to portray; and in proportion as we can follow\nhim in imagination, we come away from the spectacle with our own hearts\nbroken and purged, but strengthened to face the fact and obey the law.\nThe novelist does with inferior means, and for minds at a lower level,\nwhat the dramatist may do for a mind at its highest. He idealises enough\nto make us feel pleasure or pain, not enough to make us forget\nourselves. He excites curiosity or suspense, not awe or hope. If the\nnovel ends well, it flatters our complacency with the feeling that the\nworld as it is is not such a bad place after all; if it ends badly, it\nstrengthens the indolent conviction that aimless misery is the law of\nthe universe. There are however two ways in which novels may be of real\nservice and value. If they cannot teach men how to live, they may,\nthrough the wide range of their subjects, enable those who have already\nfound a principle of life to give it a freer application than their\nlimited circumstances would otherwise allow; the \"fictitious experience\"\nmay \"give expansion to the personal,\" while the personal gives reality\nto the fictitious, and thus may be mitigated that \"sacrifice of the\nindividual to society\" which the modern division of labor tends to bring\nabout. And secondly, by appealing to such various classes and\ncapacities, and exhibiting the identity of human nature under such\nvarious circumstances, novels supply a vehicle through which the force\nof public opinion may work, fusing differences, breaking down\nprejudices, and checking the \"despotism of situations.\" The essay\nconcludes characteristically with the refusal to believe that democracy\nis necessarily unpoetic. As \"we hold fast to the faith that the\n'cultivation of the masses,' which has for the present superseded the\ndevelopment of the individual, will in its maturity produce some higher\ntype of individual manhood than any which the old world has known,\" so,\nthough in the novel \"the creative faculty has taken a lower form than it\nheld in the epic and the tragedy,\" \"we may well believe that this\ntemporary declension is preparatory to some higher development, when the\npoet shall idealise life without making abstraction of any of its\nelements, and when the secret of existence, which he now speaks to the\ninward ear of a few, may be proclaimed on the housetops to the common\nintelligence of mankind.\"\n\nReaders of the essay who are also novel-readers will be inclined to say\nthat the writer was not much in sympathy with his subject; and he\nhimself, on getting the prize, remarks that \"it is curious that I should\nhave been successful in an essay on novels, about which I know and care\nlittle, and should have failed in both my efforts in theology, for which\nI care considerably.\" At the same time it is probably true, as he once\nsaid, that he had read more novels than his friends gave him credit for,\nand it is certainly true that what his reading lacked in extent it made\nup in intensity. As might be supposed, his taste in fiction was for\nforcible delineation and robust humor. The flavor of strong, healthy\nindividuality was what attracted him; for rarities, niceties, and\nabnormalities of mental organisation he cared nothing. He liked things\nwhich he could take hold of with his mind, not things which merely gave\nhim sensations, pleasant or painful. Both in his deepest and his\nlightest moods he was absolutely simple and \"above board,\" and this\nsimplicity made him keenly alive to the proximity of the sublime to the\nridiculous or the exquisite to the grotesque. Though he had little of\nthe animal in him, and was never troubled by his appetites, he was quite\nfree from prudery. If obscenity moved him at all, it was to frank\nlaughter or to grim contempt; he never dwelt upon it, either in the way\nof enjoyment or loathing. \"For rules of ascetic discipline,\" says a\nfriend, \"he had no need. The view of life suggested by so much of the\nbest French literature, that thinking men are generally in a practical\ndilemma between the extremes of sensual excess and of spiritual\nexaltation, did not commend itself to him in the least.\" The only forms\nof art to which he was keenly susceptible were those of oratory and\npoetry. He had no ear for music, though he seemed to get a certain\nexaltation from listening to it. In regard to painting and sculpture he\nalways professed himself incompetent, but he was not without decided\ntastes. On his first visit to the Continent he was more attracted by\nRembrandt, Holbein, and Duerer than by the Italians; \"these men,\" he\nsaid, \"grasped the idea of Christianity.\" Of Durer's four saints at\nMunich he writes, \"I could contemplate them with interest for hours; he\nhas contrived to give St. John an almost perfect expression of 'divine\nphilosophy'.\" In later years when he went to Italy he spent a good deal\nof time in looking at early Italian pictures, and admitted that they\nwould soon have got a great hold upon him. But on the whole his attitude\nto the arts (excluding those of language) was one of deferential\nignorance. He had not himself any artistic gifts; he did not even write\nverses. Yet to his friends, as one of them says, \"he never represented\nthe prose of existence. With all his gravity, with all his firm grip on\nfact and material interests, he had the enthusiastic movement of the\nworld's poetry in him.\"--From the Memoir by R. L. Nettleship, Green's\n'Works,' Vol. 3, pp. xxx-xxxiii.\n\n\n\n\nB. HEGEL ON THE NOVEL\n\n\nAmong the mongrel forms of epic should be included the half descriptive,\nhalf lyric poems which were popular among the English, dealing chiefly\nwith nature, the seasons of the year, etc. There belong also to this\ndivision numerous didactic poems in which a prosaic content is dressed\nup in poetic form, such as compendiums of physics, astronomy, and\nmedicine, and treatises on chess, fishing, hunting, and the conduct of\nlife. Poems of this sort were most artfully elaborated by the later\nGreeks, by the Romans, and, in modern times, especially by the French.\nDespite their general epic tone, they lend themselves readily to lyric\ntreatment.\n\nMore poetical, but still without the characteristics necessary for\ndefinite classification, are romances and ballads. Being epic in content\nbut lyric in treatment, these products of the Middle Ages and of modern\ntimes may be assigned to either class indifferently.\n\nThe case of the novel, the modern popular epic, is very different. Here\nwe find the same wealth and variety of interests, circumstances,\ncharacters, and human relationships, the same world-background, and the\nsame handling of events, that characterize the true epic. But there is\nlacking to it the primitive poetic state of the world, in which the true\nepic took its rise. The novel, in the modern acceptation of the term,\npresupposes a prosaically ordered reality. But working from the basis of\nthis reality, and moving within its own circle, the novel, both as\nregards picturesqueness of incident and as regards characters and their\nfate, retrieves for poetry (so far as the above presupposition permits)\nher lost prerogatives.[23]\n\nThus it happens that the struggle between the poetry of the heart and\nthe opposing prose of outward circumstances is for the novel one of the\ncommonest and most suitable conflicts. This struggle may end comically,\nor tragically, or in a reconciliation of the opposing forces. In the\nlast case the characters who at first oppose the ordinary world-order\nmay, by learning to recognize the true and abiding elements in it,\nbecome reconciled to the existing circumstances, and take an active part\nin them; or, on the other hand, they may strip off the prosaic hull from\ndeed and accomplishment, and thus put in the place of the original prose\na reality which is on intimate and friendly terms with beauty and art.\n\nAs far as the range of representation is concerned, the true novel, like\nthe epic, requires a complete world and a complete view of life, the\nmany-sided materials and relationships of which exhibit themselves in\nthe particular action that is the nucleus of the whole. As to details of\nconception and development, however, the author must be allowed great\nliberty, for it is difficult to bring the prose of real life into the\nrepresentation without sticking fast in the prosaic and\ncommonplace.--Hegel, 'Aesthetik.' 3. Thl., Kap. III. Abt. 3., S.\n394-396.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[23] In simpler terms: The novel, being a form of epic, should have all\nthe characteristics of poetry. But this is impossible because it is\ncompelled to work in the humble field of prose. Nevertheless, by a\nskilful use of description, narration, and dramatic situation, it causes\na poetic oasis to spring up in the desert of prose, and so wins back\nsome of its poetical rights.","title":"An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":16864}