origin and hence its
fitness in the general scheme begin to be comprehended. In the
perspective of history we can derive an aesthetic pleasure from the
tranquil scrutiny of all kinds of conduct--as well, for example, of a
Renaissance Pope as of a Savonarola. Observation endows our day and our
street with the romantic charm of history, and stimulates charity--not
the charity which signs cheques, but the more precious charity which
puts itself to the trouble of understanding. The one condition is that
the observer must never lose sight of the fact that what he is trying to
see is life, is the woman next door, is the man in the train--and not a
concourse of abstractions. To appreciate all this is the first inspiring
preliminary to sound observation.

IV

The second preliminary is to realise that all physical phenomena are
interrelated, that there is nothing which does not bear on everything
else. The whole spectacular and sensual show--what the eye sees, the ear
hears, the nose scents, the tongue tastes and the skin touches--is a
cause or an effect of human conduct. Naught can be ruled out as
negligible, as not forming part of the equation. Hence he who would
beyond all others see life for himself--I naturally mean the novelist
and playwright--ought to embrace all phenomena in his curiosity. Being
finite, he cannot. Of course he cannot! But he can, by obtaining a broad
notion of the whole, determine with some accuracy the position and
relative importance of the particular series of phenomena to which his
instinct draws him. If he does not thus envisage the immense background
of his special interests, he will lose the most precious feeling for
interplay and proportion without which all specialism becomes distorted
and positively darkened.

Now, the main factor in life on this planet is the planet itself. Any
logically conceived survey of existence must begin with geographical and
climatic phenomena. This is surely obvious. If you say that you are not
interested in meteorology or the configurations of the earth, I say that
you deceive yourself. You are. For an east wind may upset your liver and
cause you to insult your wife. Beyond question the most important fact
about, for example, Great Britain is that it is an island. We sail amid
the Hebrides, and then talk of the fine qualities and the distressing
limitations of those islanders; it ought to occur to us English that we
are talking of ourselves in little. In m