19. By the mere explanation of the difference between the ideal and the
natural, the poetic and novelistic, views of the world, we may seem to
have already settled the question as to the beneficial effects of each.
The question, be it observed, is not as to the comparative influence of
the discipline of art and that of real life. The man who seeks his
entire culture in art of any kind will soon find the old antagonism
between speculation and action begin to appear. There will be a chasm,
which he cannot fill, between his life in the closet and his life in the
world; his impotence to carry his thought into act will limit and weaken
the thought itself. But this ill result will equally ensue, whether the
art in which he finds his nurture be that of the novelist or that of the
poet. The novel-reader sees human action pass before him like a
panorama, but he feels none of its pains and penalties; his fancy feeds
on its pleasures, but he has not to face the struggle of resistance to
pleasure, or the suffering which follows on indulgence. Nor is it merely
from that weakness of effect which, in one sense, must always belong to
representation as opposed to reality, that the novel suffers. The
representation itself is incomplete. The novelist, like every other
artist, must abridge and select. For many of the elements whose action
builds up our human soul, there is no place in his canvas. A great part
of the discipline of life arises simply from its slowness. The long
years of patient waiting and silent labor, the struggle with
listlessness and pain, the loss of time by illness, the hope deferred,
the doubt that lays hold on delay--these are the tests of that
pertinacity in man which is but a step below heroism. The exhibition of
them in the novel, however, is prevented by that rapidity of movement
which is essential to its fascination; and hence to one whose
acquaintance with life was derived simply from novels, its main business
would be unknown. They are perhaps more brought home to us by Defoe than
by any other writer of fiction; but this is due to that very deficiency
of artistic power which makes his agglomeration of details[17] such
heavy reading to all but school-boys.