to convince us that from his very early youth he has been an indefatigable asker of questions. It was only through a healthy curiosity that he could have acquired the enormous stores of specific knowledge concerning almost every walk of life that he has displayed in his successive volumes. On the other hand, it was obviously through his vast endowment of sympathy that Dickens was able to learn so thoroughly all phases of the life of the lowly in London.
Curiosity and Sympathy.––Experience gravitates to the man who is both curious and sympathetic. The kingdom of adventure is within us. Just as we create beauty in an object when we look upon it beautifully, so we create adventure all around us when we walk the world inwardly aglow with love of life. Things of interest happened to Robert Louis Stevenson every day of his existence, because he incorporated the faculty of being interested in things. In one of his most glowing essays, “The Lantern-Bearers,” he declared that never an hour of his life had gone dully yet; if it had been spent waiting at a railway junction, he had had some scattering thoughts, he had counted some grains of 24 memory, compared to which the whole of many romances seemed but dross. The author who aspires to write fiction should cultivate the faculty of caring for all things that come to pass; he should train himself rigorously never to be bored; he should look upon all life that swims into his ken with curious and sympathetic eyes, remembering always that sympathy is a deeper faculty than curiosity: and because of the profound joy of his interest in life, he should endeavor humbly to earn that heritage of interest by developing a thorough understanding of its source. In this way, perhaps, he may grow aware of certain truths of life which are materials for fiction. If so, he will have accomplished the better half of his work: he will have found something to say.
Macbeth: Act V; Scene 3.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What is the logical relation (1) between fact and truth, (2) between fact and fiction, and (3) between truth and fiction?
2. Define the spheres of the respective contributions of art, philosophy, and science to the search for truth.
3. In what way is a well-imagined work of fiction more true to life than a newspaper report of actual occurrences?
4. Explain the logical basis for distinguishing between morality and immorality in a work of art.