scovery and Artistic Expression--The
Testimony of Hawthorne--A Philosophic Formula--Induction and
Deduction--The Inductive Method of the Realist--The Deductive Method
of the Romantic--Realism, Like Inductive Science, a Strictly Modern
Product--Advantages of Realism--Advantages of Romance--The Confinement
of Realism--The Freedom of Romance--Neither Method Better Than the
Other--Abuses of Realism--Abuses of Romance.

=Two Methods of Exhibiting the Truth.=--Although all writers of
fiction who take their work seriously and do it honestly are at one in
their purpose--namely, to embody certain truths of human life in a
series of imagined facts--they diverge into two contrasted groups
according to their manner of accomplishing this purpose,--their method
of exhibiting the truth. Consequently we find in practice two
contrasted schools of novelists, which we distinguish by the titles
Realistic and Romantic.

=Every Mind Either Realistic or Romantic.=--The distinction between
realism and romance is fundamental and deep-seated; for every man,
whether consciously or not, is either a romantic or a realist in the
dominant habit of his thought. The reader who is a realist by nature
will prefer George Eliot to Scott; the reader who is romantic will
rather read Victor Hugo than Flaubert; and neither taste is better
than the other. Each reader's preference is born with his brain, and
has its origin in his customary processes of thinking. In view of this
fact, it seems strange that no adequate definition has ever yet been
made of the difference between realism and romance.[2] Various
superficial explanations have been offered, it is true; but none of
them has been scientific and satisfactory.

=Marion Crawford's Faulty Distinction.=--One of the most common of
these superficial explanations is the one which has been phrased by
the late F. Marion Crawford in his little book upon "The Novel: What
It Is":--"The realist proposes to show men what they are; the
romantist (_sic_) tries to show men what they should be." The trouble
with this distinction is that it utterly fails to distinguish. Surely
all novelists, whether realistic or romantic, try to show men what
they are--what else can be their reason for embodying in imagined
facts the truths of human life? Victor Hugo, the romantic, in "Les
Miserables," endeavors just as honestly and earnestly to show men what
they are as does Flaubert, the realist, in "Madame Bovary." And o