ulminated in the act; the accused himself would
disagree with all the witnesses, if indeed he were capable of looking
on the facts without conscious or unconscious self-deception; and we
may be certain that an infallible omniscient mind, cognizant of all
the hidden motives, would see the matter differently still. The
task of the jury is, in the main, to induce from all these tragic
inconsistencies an absolute outlook upon the real truth that underlies
the facts so differently seen and so variously judged.

Such an absolute outlook is hardly possible to the finite mind of man;
and though it is often assumed by the writer of fiction in the telling
of his tale, it can seldom be consistently maintained. It is therefore
safer to acknowledge that the absolute truth of a story, whether
actual or fictitious, can never be entirely told; that the same train
of incidents looks different from different points of view; and that
therefore the various points of view from which any story may be
looked upon should be studied carefully for the purpose of determining
from which of them it is possible, in a given case, to approach most
nearly a clear vision of the truth.

The points of view from which a story may be seen and told are
many and various; but they may all be grouped into two classes, the
internal and the external. A story seen internally is narrated in the
first person by one of its participants; a story seen externally is
narrated in the third person by a mind aloof from the events depicted.
There are, of course, many variations, both of the internal and of
the external point of view. These in turn must be examined, for the
purpose of determining the special advantages and disadvantages of
each.

First of all, a story may be told by the leading actor in its series
of events,--the hero, as in "Henry Esmond," or the heroine, as in
"Jane Eyre." This point of view is of especial value in narratives
in which the element of action is predominant. The multifarious
adventures of Gil Blas sound at once more vivid and more plausible
narrated in the first person than they would sound narrated in the
third. When what is done is either strange or striking, we prefer
to be told about it by the very man who did it. "Treasure Island" is
narrated by Jim Hawkins, "Kidnapped" by David Balfour; and much of the
vividness of these exciting tales depends upon the fact that they
are told in each case by a boy who stood ever in the forefront of
t