Note 296 — Chapter XXI · [287]

It thus comes about that we can say such things as that Ivanhoe did not really marry Rebecca, as Thackeray falsely makes him do. The real Ivanhoe-world is the one which Scott wrote down for us. In that world Ivanhoe does not marry Rebecca. The objects within that world are knit together by perfectly definite relations, which can be affirmed or denied. Whilst absorbed in the novel, we turn our backs on all other worlds, and, for the time, the Ivanhoe-world remains our absolute reality. When we wake from the spell, however, we find a still more real world, which reduces Ivanhoe, and all things connected with him, to the Active status, and relegates them to one of the sub-universes grouped under No. 5.