THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. , 23 
has had a great deal of righteousness in general preached at it, but 
very little righteousness in particular. Now I ask, is there any 
medium so effective as the novel for the presenting, and so the 
teaching, of the great desideratum—trighteousness in particular. 
Indeed, is there any other way in which can be shown the courses of 
thought and action that ultimately lead to fault and vice, and the 
courses of life that lead to purity and strength ? 
But now, in view of all these things, what must we decide to be 
the greatest in novel-writing ? What kind of a novel is the highest ? 
I would define the greatest in fiction to be the novel that portrays 
and describes, with the strictest truth to human nature, as nearly as 
can be done in written language, human life, not only as it exhibits 
itself in action but also as the actors are conscious of it, and shows 
the operations of mind and the conflicts of influences with their 
subtle effects. This novel makes men and women act before us, it 
describes the hidden life they lead in other realms than that of 
sense; it also traces the unrecognized workings that are gradually 
forming or changing their characters. It is the presentation of a 
complete human being ; we are shown his outward life and his in- 
ward life ; we know those processes by which he has become what he 
is and those by which he is developing or narrowing into what he will 
be. We must bear in mind in connection with this definition the many 
limitations that the nature of the case will put upon it. The novelist 
has only four or five hundred pages, say, in which to represent some 
phase of life. It is impossible in that space to put down everything 
that would be found in like circumstances in actual life, and it is not 
an object with him todo so, He aims to give a complete whole in 
a limited space, and to do so he must carefully select those points that 
are most prominent and most essential. He must get a proper pro- 
portion, a proper perspective, in his work. Out of this fact there arise 
a great many technical rules of art with which it is not my present 
purpose to deal. I am treating only of the matter of the novel and 
am not considering at all the question of the form in which this 
matter may be best presented ; and so, when, in the above definition, 
I said the greatest novel must be strictly true to human nature, I did 
not mean that it must present an exhaustive picture of life, but that 
whatever points it did present must be strictly conformable to the 
laws that govern men and women. 
