cation, a tying followed by an untying, or (to say
the same thing in French words which are perhaps more connotative) a
_nouement_ followed by a _denouement_. The events in the _denouement_
bear a closer logical relation to each other than the events in the
_nouement_, because all of them have a common cause in the major knot,
whereas the major knot is the ultimate effect of several distinct
series of causes which were quite separate one from another at the
time when the _nouement_ was begun. For this reason the _denouement_
shows usually a more hurried movement than the _nouement_--one event
treading on another's heels.

="Beginning, Middle, and End."=--Undoubtedly it was this threefold
aspect of a plot--1. _The Complication_; 2. _The Major Knot_; 3. _The
Explication_--which Aristotle had in mind when he stated that every
story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. These words were
not intended to connote a quantitative equality. What Aristotle called
the "middle" may, in a modern novel, be stated in a single page, and
is much more likely to stand near the close of the book than at the
centre. But everything that comes after it, in what Aristotle called
the "end," should be an effect of which it is the cause; and
everything that comes before it, in what Aristotle called the
"beginning," should be, directly or indirectly, a cause of which it is
the effect. Only under these conditions will the plot be, as Aristotle
said it should be, an organic whole. Only in this way can it conform
to the principle of unity, which is the first principle of all
artistic endeavor.

=The Sub-Plot.=--Bearing the principle of unity ever in his mind,
Stevenson, in a phrase omitted for the moment in one of the quotations
from "A Humble Remonstrance" set forth at the beginning of this
chapter, advised the fiction-writer to "avoid a sub-plot, unless, as
sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of
the main intrigue." It seems safe to state that a sub-plot is of use
in a novel only for the purpose of tying minor knots in the leading
strands of causation, and should be discarded unless it serves that
purpose. There is no reason, however, why a novel should not tell at
once several stories of equal importance, provided that these stories
be deftly interlinked, as in that masterpiece of plotting, "Our Mutual
Friend." In this novel, the chief expedient which Dickens has employed
to bind his different stories togethe