416 APPENDIX 



III 



In other departments of literature, notably in romance and 

 fiction, the same principles hold good. We have heard much 

 lately of realistic novels. But even Zola, with his notebook and 

 his catalogues of objects, is compelled to idealise, because he cannot 

 seize reality except as a mode of his own sensuous and mental 

 being. There are as many ways of perceiving and conceiving fact 

 as there are individuals. A novel cannot be the exact representa- 

 tion of reality, because it must be the representation of what some 

 human being finds in reality. This has been tersely and vigorously 

 put by M. Guy de Maupassant in the preface to his ' Pierre et 

 Jean.' ! ' How childish, moreover,' he exclaims, ' to believe in 

 reality, since we each carry our own in our thought and in our 

 organs 1 Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, of taste, differing 

 from one person to another, create as many truths as there are 

 men upon earth. And our minds, taking instruction from these 

 organs, so diversely impressed, understand, analyse, judge, as if 

 each of us belonged to a different race. Each one of us, therefore, 

 forms for himself an illusion of the world ; and the writer has 

 no other mission than to reproduce faithfully this illusion, with 

 all the contrivances of art that he has learned and has at his 

 command.' 



In the main, this doctrine carries conviction. Yet M. de 

 Maupassant must be taken to task for one or two exaggerated 

 statements. It is not childish to believe in reality because the 

 individual cannot perceive it or reproduce it without the admixture 

 of his subjectivity. It is not true that there are as many truths as 

 there are men upon the earth ; else the delusions of maniacs, who 

 mistake a wreath of yellow paper for a crown of gold, or a dirty 

 cotton gown for the bridal robe of a daughter of Zion, would be 

 truths ; else colour-blindness would rank on equal terms with com- 

 plete vision. Nor conversely is it true that the conceptions which 

 we each of us form of the world are merely illusions. The fact is, 

 that we do believe in reality, although we admit our inability to 

 seize it or express it except in terms of our own thought and senses. 

 The fact is, that we are capable of distinguishing normal from 

 abnormal impressions of reality, and that only the former have 

 any lasting value for us. The fact is, that while we recognise a 



1 I quote from Mr. Henry James's translation, Fortnightly Review, 

 March, 1888, p. 366. 



