30 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
ties of formation such an island as we seek? We donot know. 
Meanwhile we are sailing and dreaming. Can such a voyage be 
compared in any respect to that of the man who thoroughly studies 
his boat until there is not a thing he cannot do, not an emergency for 
which he is not prepared ; then master the principles of navigation ; © 
then make himself perfectly familiar with the chart till he can place 
every rock and every shoal? When the sky threatens he understands 
it and prepares for storms, and when the squall strikes him he exults 
because he is ready for it and can weather it. When rocks frown he 
can escape them because he knows where the deep water lies. Is 
such a man’s voyage all drudgery as compared with that of the man 
who dreams? Far fromit. The sun is glorious at sea, the mist is 
weird, the stars are eloquent, the moonlight on the water is divine, 
and even the angry, crested waves are grand. His voyage is all 
pleasure, because he is safe, and he is safe because he has studied 
and because he knows. 
For this reason I cannot believe in devoting one’s time to fiction . 
that is admittedly untrue to life. I am anxious to understand life, 
and have not yet discovered that the only pleasure is to be found in 
temporary escapes into other, imaginary, states of being. 
But you say, since a novel is not written on account of its pos- 
sible effect on its readers, so much as on account of a natural desire 
for expression in the author, we must look for the greatest in fiction 
in what is greatest from the author’s standpoint, and surely that 
greatest will be found where he gives, as it is called, free scope to his 
imagination. I admit that before my case can be complete I must 
establish that what we have already seen to be greatest from the 
reader’s standpoint is greatest also from the author’s. 
I think that, from this point of view, as well as from the reader’s, 
there will be no discussion about that part of the definition which 
makes the greatest novel contain more than words and actions, for 
it is unquestionably greater in the author to exhibit not only the ex- 
ternal but also the hidden sources of the external. The contention 
will settle around the assertion that his presentation must be true to 
human nature. 
We have already seen that imagination is the power of making 
images of general conceptions. The difference in the images de- 
pends on a difference of conception. The difference between the 
works of Rider Haggard and those of Thackeray, for example, is not 
