The subject matter of literature covers the whole range of human life
and activity, as well as every known manifestation of physical nature.
For not only are actual events and the doings and sayings of actual
persons reproduced in it, but the rules deduced from the observation of
the conditions of man’s life are included in its records. Similarly it
presents to us not merely what individual men found to interest them in
particular countries in a particular epoch, but also the general laws
which have been gradually formulated by long-continued observation of
the processes of nature.
Literature, therefore, plays a very important part in the life of man.
It is the greatest of the secondary sources of knowledge, and it makes
an immense contribution to the sum total of facts--the joint result of
the experience of the individual and of the race--which gives to each
one of us a wide outlook upon the world at large. But we must remember
that literature--as literature--is concerned solely with the
_subjective_ outlook upon the world.