ng purpose, have thus far occupied a writer whose life has been
spent in alternations of solitude and the life of society. The latter,
so far as he is concerned, resembles that of many other persons to whom
society is naturally agreeable and have had the opportunity of enjoying
it. It is a life which for him has remained substantially the same from
his early youth onward, except for the fact that with time his social
experiences have widened, that they have been varied by travels more or
less extensive, and that they might have been varied also by the
vicissitudes of political publicity had not his disposition inclined
him, having had some taste of both, to the methods of literature rather
than to those of the party platform.

Which method is the best for one who, inspired by tenacious and
interconnected convictions, desires to make these prevail is a question
which different people will answer in different ways. But let us make
one supposition. Let us suppose that a person, such, for instance, as
myself, who has dealt with ideas and principles in his opinion
fallacious (notably those connected with the current claims of Labor),
should have so succeeded in influencing the thoughts and the temper of
his contemporaries that the modern strife between employers and employed
should be pacified, and arrangements by sober discussion should render
all strikes needless. Nobody would deny that a person who had brought
about this result had performed what would be, in the strictest sense,
an action--an action of the most practical and signally important kind,
and it would be no less practical if accomplished by means of literature
than it would be if accomplished by the ingenuity of cabinets or select
committees. Such being the case, then, the reflection will here suggest
itself that literature and action are by many critics of life constantly
spoken of as though they were contrasted or antithetic things. It will
not be inappropriate here, as a conclusion to these memoirs, to consider
how far, or in what sense, this contrast is valid.

[4] This work, later in date than the preceding, deals with the
religious difficulties arising from the phenomena of multiple
personality, a subject which was then being widely discussed in England,
on the Continent, and in America.

CHAPTER XVIII

LITERATURE AND ACTION

Literature as Speech Made Permanent--All Written Speech Not
Literature--The Essence of Literature for Its Own