the
point that in literature, or in sculpture and painting, emotion entails
no action; it has no outlet, and is without practical consequences; the
will is paralyzed by the fatuity of trying to influence an unreal series
of events, and in the case of the object of beauty in statue or painting
by the impossibility of possession. The world of art is thus thought of
as one of pure contemplation, a place of escape from the difficulties,
the pangs, and the incompleteness that beset all action. It is true that
the imagined world creates special conditions for emotion, and that the
will does not act in respect to that world; but does this imply any
radical difference in the emotion, or does it draw after it the
consequence that the will does not act at all? Checked emotion, emotion
dying in its own world, is common in life; and so, too, is contemplation
as a mode of approach to beauty, as in landscape, or even in human
figures where there is no thought of any other possession than the
presence of beauty before the eye and soul; escape, too, into a sphere
of impersonality, in the love of nature or the spectacle of life, is a
common refuge. Art does not give us new faculties, generate unknown
habits, or in any way change our nature; it presents to us a new world
only, toward which our mental behaviour is the same as in the rest of
life. Why, then, should emotion, the most powerful element in life, be
regarded as a fruitless thing in that ideal art which has thus far
appeared as a life in purer energy and higher intensity of being than
life itself?

The distinction between emotion depicted and that felt in response must
be kept in mind to avoid confusion, for both sorts are present at the
same time. In literature emotion may be set forth as a phase of the
character or as a term in the plot; it may be a single moment of high
feeling as in a lyric or a prolonged experience as in a drama; it may be
shown in the pure type of some one passion as in Romeo, or in the
various moods of a rich nature as in Hamlet; but, whether it be
predominant or subordinate in any work, it is there treated in the same
way and for the same purpose as other materials of life. What happens
when literature gives us, for instance, examples of moral experience? It
informs the mind of the normal course of certain lines of action, of the
inevitable issues of life; it breeds habits of right thinking in respect
to these; it is educative, and though we do not act a