tic.

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.

[Footnote 2: The theory which follows in this chapter was first
announced by the present writer in _The Dial_ for November 16, 1904.]

One of the most common of these superficial explanations is the one
which has been phrased by Mr. 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 on the other hand, Thackeray, the realist, in
characters like Henry Esmond and Colonel Newcome, shows men what they
should be just as thoroughly as the romantic Scott. Indeed, it is
hardly possible to conceive how any novelist, whether romantic or
realistic, could devise a means of showing the one thing without at
the same time showing the other also. Every important fiction-writer,
no matter to which of the two schools he happens to belong, strives
to accomplish, in a single effort of creation, _both_ of the purposes
noted by Mr. Crawford. He may be realistic or romantic in his way of
showing men what they are; realistic or romantic in his way of showing
them what they should be: the difference lies, not in which of the two
he tries to show, but in the way he tries to show it.

Again, we have been told that, in their stories, the romantics dwell
mainly upon the