But the whole bulk is alive with the bacteria of animalism, under increasing control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions so impenetrable and vast that to attempt to personalize it in the sneaking figure of Hypocrisy would be as absurd as to try to enlarge the significance of an ivory chessman by setting it up on a lady's jewel box and naming it Moloch. All men feel how much of them is brute and how much is reason; but it is the unimpartable secret of human society whose betrayal has been rendered impossible by universal denials in advance, enacted in to what we call criminal laws, under which admissions are denied by the brand of proportionate infamies, to demonstrate that the traitor who has acted or spoken has not put into expression the secrets of the mass. Great armies and constabularies are kept to commit upon a large scale the murders and violence which, when committed upon a small scale, they punish.
What is the record of the officialism of public opinion? There has been nothing so abhorrent and cruel, so sordid, mean, frivolous, indecent or insane, that the representative fashion and respectability of some splendid civilization has not justified, approved and sustained it. It has licensed every wanton passion of the body. It has even indulged, contemptuously at times, those individuals inspired through the mysterious selection of immortal genius to safeguard the slender flame of spiritual light and life. But those indulged have always been made to feel that they were secure only as long as their performances excited jaded appetites as a novelty. If dwarfs and monstrosities staled; if dancing girls palled; if gladiators wearied; if there were no new games invented—then bring in a poet or artist—some queer fellow who had discovered something that he called truth or beauty, and let him amuse. But if he does not amuse, or if he wear out his welcome, away with him. In the history of our own civilization, as our ideals go, there was one divine incarnation of spiritual and intellectual life that struggled through the tears, blood and dirt of existence without one stain upon the purity of his nature. This essence was a beacon light that has shone steadily through nearly two thousand years. And Him the officialism of human nature, in exaltation of savage contempt, nailed upon a cross, and set up for an ominous warning to the whole world. It had already marked the noble Socrates, and, like Cleopatra to her slave, handed him a cup of poison. It was afterward to compel Gallileo to swallow in shame and agony his testimony to unalterable truth. Even in this year, under the title of a great church, it has, with pitiless persistence, forced a great student and educator, not to deny a historical fact that he had discovered, but to humbly regret its promulgation. As if the concealment of a truth for your advantage in moral controversy were not a greater crime than the concealment of a murderer for pay! Whenever this officialism has concluded to amuse itself with spiritual inquiries in the name of religious controversies, it has conducted them with fire and the sword, with thumbscrews and the boot, and all manner of ingenious ferocity.
The officialism of public opinion has always been ready to serve the demands of the base nature below. It was the great lawgiver, Lycurgus, who taught Spartan youths the commercial economy of theft and the virtue and advantage of lying. It was not only when Rome was in decay, but when she was at the zenith of glory from the first Brutus to Octavius, when Cæsar, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, and the Plinys lived at the seat of the knowledge, wealth, art and power of the world, that women crowded the colosseums to feast their senses upon the ferocity of tigers and give the death signal to the gladiator who charmed by his fatal skill. It was while Shakespeare lived that English gentlemen and mothers apprenticed their sons to the trade of piracy. In our own century and country we have seen Abraham Lincoln, the liberator, himself, enlist under the flag of official public opinion to strike a blow in the extermination of red Indians who had committed the unpardonable crime of owning their own land whereon we are assembled to-day.
The fashions of lust and cruelty may change with the amusements they permit, but officialism promotes all with zeal. At present we laugh at Mesmer and study hypnotism; at present we sneer at the incarnations of Vishnu and inquire into Theosophy; at present we condemn the sacrificial "great custom" of King Prempeh and order our killings by twelve men and the sheriff and by elaborate machinery; at present we shudder at the sports of Commodus and wait breathlessly upon bulletins from Carson City. Those who scouted the fetiches of Dahomey have waited on their knees in the Cathedral at Naples for the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or crawled in agony of hope to the saving pool at Lourdes. There have been those melted to tenderest compassion at the sight of a wounded dog or an overdriven horse, who have yet owned human slaves and contended that it was right, even if harsh, to sell a mother and her child from one auction block to different owners. There have been those so wounded by the shortcomings of their neighbors that they have organized white-capped bands of virtue to wipe out immorality in the cleansing blood of murder. A man may reject the miracle of Jonah and yet see an airship.
Now this is the tribunal that has handed down the judgment that novel-reading is a vice. Is it not a most natural, just and honest opinion? Could such a tribunal properly pronounce any other? Is it not such a judgment in fact as vindicates the integrity of the court, while it crowns the culprit with glory? In expressing the idea that the reading of novels is only an amusement—to be taken up when there is nothing else to do—your average grocer, tailor, lawyer, or what not, has but spoken to you the world's judgment. In fact there are countless readers of novels who have grown up in this atmosphere of conviction that novels are meant only to amuse. They are so habituated to the idea that novels, to them, are valueless—mere sentimental unrealities or spiced narratives of heated invention—so that they go through the treasure houses of genius without ever hearing the soft-voiced persuasion of knowledge or seeing the marvelous, vivid panorama of human life, illustrating its aspirations, sorrows, struggles, triumphs and failures. Such readers, convinced in advance that everything in a novel is fictitious, because the personages discussed are fictitious in name, never dream that study of the conduct of these personages may be useful to influence their own manners, conduct, morals or sympathies. Indeed, some of them are so confident of the unreality of novels that when they are confronted with their own counterparts in fictitious personality they feel a certain sense of humiliation as of being convicted of eccentricity, of an unlikeness to actual persons, which must be concealed as branding them "fit to be put into a novel." To such persons novel-reading is a vice, because it is an indolent excitement, a mental opium-eating; the useless butting—against an unscalable wall—of brains intended to be fully occupied in developing those parts of the nervous and muscular systems that find their highest application in vigorous devotion to the washboard or the laying of gas pipes down.
What a different result is achieved by the reader who knows the secret that imagination is the soul of thought, that taste is the power of truth and that the abstractions produced by imagination and taste dealing with fact to convert it to fiction, or carefully assembling fiction to convert it to fact, have been the stars that have lighted up the night of human history. By the light of these in their varying forms man discovered Religion, Philosophy, Science, Government and the possibility of orderly Liberty. To such a reader the novel comprehends all human society, its customs and secrets. The untraveled man may sit in his library and become as familiar with the world as with his native town; the diffident student may mingle familiarly in the society of courts; the bashful girl may learn the most engaging manners; the slow may learn the trick of wit; the rich may learn sympathy for the poor; the weak may be warned against the pitfalls of temptation and every one may there survey himself in every aspect, subjected to discussion and exhibition under various disguises and under various circumstances; and, if he have courage and the desire, he can decide what he thinks of himself and the possibilities of improving the opinion in the light of full knowledge of the subject.
The Novel has come as the solvent of all literary art. In its possibilities all the essentials of other literary forms are combined and conveyed without injury. Professedly not History, it performs all its wonders in the guise of History and adds a light and a human interest to chronicle that gives increased value. We do not get sympathetic and human knowledge of England from History, but from Scott, Thackeray and her splendid historical novelists. We do not turn to Guizot and Thiers for any knowledge of French history except its stated public facts, its documents with royal seals and its verified dates and details—it is to Dumas, Merimee, Balzac that all but the professional students of history go. We do not seek in the rapid sketches of Gibbon for the story of Nero, but in the pages of "Quo Vadis." Where do we find the breathing history of Spain except in the countless novels that its picturesque subjects have suggested? I would scorn to underestimate the profound and substantial value that the great muse of History has conferred upon the world. In all literature she deservedly ranks first in dignity, power and usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister is not the Novel, which by its lightness, grace and address has popularized history all over the world?
While the Novel has none of the guise of poetry, yet it has its every essence, neglecting only form and rhyme. In the Novel you may find the measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry, and a capacity for inspiring enthusiasm and emulation quite as great as poetry unjoined to the divine enchantress, Music.
Plainly not Drama, yet what is more dramatic than the Novel? In the miracle of its pages you find theater, scenery, actors, audience and author. You may sit at your ease in your library chair and command the services of the most innumerable company of comedians, tragedians, lovers, ladies, buffoons, soubrettes and pantomimists that the world ever knew. How many novels have been turned into dramas, how few dramas have been successfully expanded into novels!