GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.

The best modern usage restricts the word literature to that which deals with the human heart and emotion, including intellectual emotion. That into which no feeling can enter is not literature. So a pure scientific treatise is not literature; neither is a simple historical record literature, as for example the news in a newspaper. Indeed, all histories, treatises, philosophical works, and textbooks and handbooks are literature only in such cases as an appeal is made to the universal heart or the emotions common to mankind.

A little psychology will help us to understand the matter better. The mind has three aspects: the intellectual, which gives us truth; the ethical, which gives us nobility; and the esthetic, which gives us beauty. It is really impossible to separate one of these things from the other entirely; but we may say that in science we have nothing but the intellectual, or truth; in religion nothing but the ethical, or nobility; and in art nothing but the esthetic, or beauty. But as a religion without truth or beauty would be a very poor affair, so art without truth or nobility would be almost inconceivable.

Literature is far more than art. Of course literature must be artistic: it must have the esthetic element of beauty; but it must also have both nobility and truth; and it must make its appeal through the emotions, that is, its appeal must be human. Possibly we must admit that all art is human, that its appeal is emotional; but this is not true of all beauty, for a mathematical hyperbola or parabola is perfectly beautiful, and it has its part in all drawing of artistic beauty; but the parabola or hyperbola does not become art except when executed by the human hand in making an appeal to human emotions.

Distinctions between truth, nobility, and beauty are merely for the sake of helping our thought. That which is noble must be true and it must be beautiful. That which is lacking in truth is lacking also in beauty. This, however, we are not always able to discover without analysing. Something may seem beautiful while we are thinking of beauty alone; but let us test its nobility or its truth, and if these are wanting we suddenly discover defects in the beauty we had not perceived before.

Who of us has not seen a woman who seemed at first to be perfectly beautiful, but whom we afterward found to be lacking in intellect or character. On re-examining the beauty we discover a weak mouth, inexpressive eyes, and other defects which may in time quite spoil the perfection of form we had admired so much at first, and we wonder how we could overlook these defects. The fact is, one supreme quality is likely to blind us to all defects until we cease to gaze upon that quality and hunt for others.

If we are literary critics, the first quality of literature that is likely to attract our attention is that of artistic beauty, which usually shows itself especially in the style. The musical flow of the words, the aptness and grace of the images, the refinement in the choice of words, make style, which, like charity, is a garment which covers a multitude of sins. If we are students, we look at the truth of the statements, their accuracy, their real significance, and talk about the poem’s or the story’s “depth” or lack of depth. But the common reader is more likely to judge the literary work by its nobility; in a novel such a reader wants characters he can admire and imitate, in a poem he wants thoughts that will inspire. Often to such a reader the lack of truth and of beauty are not even perceived. We see that which we look for, and fail to see that in which we have no interest.

But what part does amusement play in real literature? We hear that the “star of the public amuser is in the ascendant.” Is the novel any the less literature for being amusing? or may it amuse without being literature?

But let us see what amusement is. An alternative term is recreation, which means literally “being created anew.” Any escape from the routine of life into an atmosphere which is harmonious with our faculties for enjoyment is recreation. Amusement is the antithesis of work. A book the reading of which contains no suggestion of labour is a perfect recreation, since it allows our overworked faculties to rest and calls into play those faculties which otherwise would lie fallow and ultimately become stunted and dead. When we speak of a book as “amusing” we mean that it affords a complete relaxation to our faculties; but such complete relaxation is not altogether necessary to perfect recreation, for we may exercise one set of faculties while relaxing another. Literature is and should be relaxing to those faculties that are worn out by the dull routine of life; but any statement that a novel should be merely amusing, merely relaxing, is decidedly untrue to the facts in the case. The public does want recreation; we all want it; we all need it; it is one of the highest offices of literature to give it; but mere relaxation of wearied faculties will never create us anew. For true re-creation we must have that in literature which has been named creative,—something positive, vital, strong, and human. It is the duty of all great literature to be interesting. That which has ceased to be interesting is dead, and the quicker it is buried the better. The fact is, however, that no efforts at embalming or preservation on the part of critics will keep before the public that which the public chooses to bury.

And this brings us to another question. What part has popularity in true literature? Some swear only by that which is very popular; and others curse the masses of the people, declaring that they like that which is bad for its very badness, wallowing in filth and the commonplace, loving sentimentality in preference to true sentiment, and seeking in fiction only excitement of their passions. Such a view is libellous. As Lincoln once said in regard to other matters, You can deceive all the people part of the time and part of the people all the time, but you cannot deceive all the people all the time. We must confess that the public is always wandering after a will-o’-the-wisp; but at all times the public as a whole, we must believe, is seeking the good. It does not love the bad merely because it is bad; but it swallows the bad because it wants the grain of good it can get in no other way. And with the element of time added, it is the public that makes “the verdict of posterity” which all reverence. We must not forget, however, the element in the equation called Time; for that Time may reduce the equation to zero and prove that our unknown quantity is nothing.

And now let us ask what relation any work of literary art ought to have to our lives of toil. If it merely gives us a picture of our actual lives it cannot be interesting or amusing, since we want to get away from ourselves and exercise new faculties and have new experiences. On the other hand, we understand only what we live, and if we get too far away from our own experiences we are equally at a loss. The fact is, a work of literature should give us ourselves idealized and in a dream, all we wished to be but could not be, all we hoped for but missed. True literature rounds out our lives, gives us consolation for our failures, rebuke for our vices, suggestions for our ambition, hope, and love, and appreciation. To do that it should have truth, nobility, and beauty in a high degree, and our first test of a work of literature should be to ask the three questions, Is it beautiful? Is it true? Is it noble?