WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE WORTH CONSIDERING.
As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the
present must consist of one glancing backwards.
To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of
confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the
moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have
betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and
even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be
urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully
see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look
for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable
enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it
couple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that,
while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction
based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact,
that, in real life, a consistent character is a _rara avis_? Which
being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can
hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from
perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at
his wits' ends to understand living character, shall those who are not
sages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit
along a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every
character can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a
glance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear
for wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand,
that author who draws a character, even though to common view
incongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different
periods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the
caterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false
but faithful to facts.
If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters
as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader
unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of
conception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide
here; but as no one man can be coextensive with _what is_, it may be
unwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of
Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists,
appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in
some way, artificially stuck on.
But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her
duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no
business to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always,
they should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency,
which, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in
certain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to
their kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted,
considering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen
through, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon
the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its
inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its
contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out,
thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always
representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he
clearly knows all about it.
But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in
books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first
their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out
to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as
in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web
of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their
satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to
the understanding even of school misses, the last complications of that
spirit which is affirmed by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
made.
At least, something like this is claimed for certain psychological
novelists; nor will the claim be here disputed. Yet, as touching this
point, it may prove suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity,
having for their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
have, by the best judges, been excluded with contempt from the ranks of
the sciences--palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise,
the fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the most
eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as with other topics, seem
some presumption of a pretty general and pretty thorough ignorance of
it. Which may appear the less improbable if it be considered that, after
poring over the best novels professing to portray human nature, the
studious youth will still run risk of being too often at fault upon
actually entering the world; whereas, had he been furnished with a true
delineation, it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be very crooked, he
may often pause; but, thanks to his true map, he does not hopelessly
lose his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection,
that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human
nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the
same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them
is in expression, not in feature.
But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some mathematicians are yet
in hopes of hitting upon an exact method of determining the longitude,
the more earnest psychologists may, in the face of previous failures,
still cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
discovering the heart of man.
But enough has been said by way of apology for whatever may have seemed
amiss or obscure in the character of the merchant; so nothing remains
but to turn to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
thought to that of action.