ed. And mark, for a
last differentia, that this quickening of the pulse is, in almost every
case, purely agreeable; that these phantom reproductions of experience,
even at their most acute, convey decided pleasure; while experience
itself, in the cockpit of life, can torture and slay.

What, then, is the object, what the method, of an art, and what the
source of its power? The whole secret is that no art does "compete with
life." Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut
his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality. The arts, like
arithmetic and geometry, turn away their eyes from the gross, coloured
and mobile nature at our feet, and regard instead a certain figmentary
abstraction. Geometry will tell us of a circle, a thing never seen in
nature: asked about a green circle or an iron circle, it lays its hand
upon its mouth. So with the arts. Painting, ruefully comparing sunshine
and flake-white, gives up truth of colour, as it had already given up
relief and movement; and instead of vying with nature, arranges a scheme
of harmonious tints. Literature, above all in its most typical mood, the
mood of narrative, similarly flees the direct challenge and pursues
instead an independent and creative aim. So far as it imitates at all,
it imitates not life but speech; not the facts of human destiny, but the
emphasis and the suppressions with which the human actor tells of them.
The real art that dealt with life directly was that of the first men who
told their stories round the savage campfire. Our art is occupied, and
bound to be occupied, not so much in making stories true as in making
them typical; not so much in capturing the lineaments of each fact, as
in marshalling all of them towards a common end. For the welter of
impressions, all forcible but all discrete, which life presents, it
substitutes a certain artificial series of impressions, all indeed most
feebly represented, but all aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of
the same idea, all chiming together like consonant notes in music or
like the graduated tints in a good picture. From all its chapters, from
all its pages, from all its sentences, the well-written novel echoes and
re-echoes its one creative and controlling thought; to this must every
incident and character contribute; the style must have been pitched in
unison with this; and if there is anywhere a word that looks another
way, the book would be stronger, clearer, and (I had