od loosely as synonymous with _happening_. Let us
first examine the exact meaning of the word _series_.

=Series and Succession.=--The word _series_ implies much more than the
word _succession_: it implies a relation not merely chronological but
also logical; and the logical relation it implies is that of cause and
effect. In any section of actual life which we examine, the events are
likely to appear merely in succession and not in series. One event
follows another immediately in time, but does not seem linked to it
immediately by the law of causation. What you do this morning does not
often necessitate as a logical consequence what you do this afternoon;
and what you do this evening is not often a logical result of what you
have done during the day. Any transcript from actual life that is not
deliberately arranged and logically patterned is therefore likely not
to be a narrative. A passage from a diary, for instance, which states
events in the order of their happening but makes no attempt to present
them as links in a chain of causation, is not, technically speaking,
narrative in method. To illustrate this point, let us open at random
the diary of Samuel Pepys. Here is his entry for April 29, 1666:--

"To Church, where Mr. Mills, a lazy sermon upon the Devil's having no
right to anything in this world. To Mr. Evelyn's, where I walked in
his garden till he come from Church, with great pleasure reading
Ridley's discourse, all my way going and coming, upon the Civil and
Ecclesiastical Law. He being come home, he and I walked together in
the garden with mighty pleasure, he being a very ingenious man; and,
the more I know him, the the more I love him. Weary to bed, after
having my hair of my head cut shorter, even close to my skull, for
coolness, it being mighty hot weather."

There is no logical continuity in the worthy diarist's faithful
chronicle of actuality. What occasioned the weariness with which he
went to bed? It could not have been the company of Mr. Evelyn, whom he
loved; it could hardly have been the volume on the civil and
ecclesiastical law, though its title does suggest the soporific. Was
his strength, like Samson's, shorn away with the hair of his head; or
can it be that that lazy sermon of Mr. Mills' got in its deadening
effects at bedtime? We notice, at any rate, that the diarist's remarks
need considerable re-arrangement to make them really narrative.

=Life Is Chronological, Art Is Logical.=--Yet it