certain facts of actual
life, study them in the light of extended experience, and induce from
them the general laws which he deems to be the truths which underlie
them. In doing this, he is a scientist. Next, if he be a great
thinker, he will correlate these truths and build out of them a
structure of belief. In doing this, he is a philosopher. Lastly, he
must create imaginatively such scenes and characters as will
illustrate the truths he has discovered and considered, and will
convey them clearly and effectively to the minds of his readers. In
doing this, he is an artist.

=Different Degrees of Emphasis.=--But although this triple mental
process (of scientific discovery, philosophic understanding, and
artistic expression) is experienced in full by every master of
fiction, we find that certain authors are interested most in the
first, or scientific phase of the process, others in the second, or
philosophic phase, and still others in the third, or artistic
phase. Evidently Emile Zola is interested chiefly in a scientific
investigation of the actual facts of life, George Eliot in a
philosophic contemplation of its underlying truths, and Gabriele
D'Annunzio in an artistic presentation of the dream-world that he
imagines. Washington Irving is mainly an artist, Tolstoi mainly a
philosopher, and Jane Austen mainly a scientifically accurate
observer. Few are the writers, even among the greatest masters of
the art, of whom we feel, as we feel of Hawthorne, that the scientist,
the philosopher, and the artist reign over equal precincts of their
minds. Hawthorne the scientist is so thorough, so accurate, and so
precise in his investigations of provincial life that no less a
critic than James Russell Lowell declared the "House of the Seven
Gables" to be "the most valuable contribution to New England history
that has yet been made." Hawthorne the philosopher is so wise in his
understanding of crime and retribution, so firm in his structure of
belief concerning moral truth, that it seems that he, if any one,
might give an answer to that poignant cry of a despairing murderer,--

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"[1]

And Hawthorne the artist is so delicate