dustry means to the modern world.

In the broad and social sense, the epic is undeniably a greater type
of fiction than the novel, because it is more resumptive of life in
the large, and looks upon humanity with a vaster sweep of vision; but
in the deep and personal sense, the novel is the greater, because it
is more capable of an intimate study of individual emotion. And it is
possible, as we have seen, that modern fiction should be at once epic
and novelistic in content and in mood,--epic in resuming all aspects
of a certain phase of life and in exhibiting a social struggle, and
novelistic in casting emphasis upon personal details of character and
in depicting intimate emotions. Probably no other author has succeeded
better than Emile Zola in combining the epic and the novelistic moods
of fiction; and the novels in the Rougon-Macquart series are at once
communal and personal in their significance.

It is somewhat simpler to trace a distinction both in content and in
mood between novelistic and dramatic fiction, because the latter is
produced under special conditions which impose definite limitations
upon the author. A drama is, in essence, a story devised to be
presented by actors on a stage before an audience. The dramatist,
therefore, works ever under the sway of three influences to which the
novelist is not submitted:--namely, the temperament of the actors by
whom his plays are to be performed, the physical conditions of the
theater in which they are to be produced, and the psychologic nature
of the audience before which they are to be presented. The combined
force of these three external influences upon the dramatist accounts
for all of the essential differences between the drama and the novel.

First of all, because of the influence of his actors, the dramatist
is obliged to draw character through action, and to eliminate from his
work almost every other means of characterization. He must therefore
select from life such moments as are active rather than passive. His
characters must constantly be doing something; they may not pause for
careful contemplation. Consequently the novelist has a wider range of
subject than the dramatist, because he is able to consider life more
calmly, and to concern himself, if need be, with thoughts and feelings
that do not translate themselves into action. In depicting objective
events in which the element of action is paramount, the drama is more
immediate and vivid; but the novel