THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 19 
general statements. We read in our papers every day statistics of dis- 
asters, for example, of mining disasters, giving the number killed and 
an inventory of the loss, and we are comparatively unaffected, if, up 
to that time, we have had no bereavement in our own experience. But 
hand that same paper to one who has passed through such a scene 
as that recorded, and even the barest figures will make him shudder. 
In order to interpret statistics and general statements we must have 
a sympathy already in existence founded on our past experience. 
If we have not this we must have the scene presented to us with 
such vividness that we will live through it in fictitious experience. 
So in the case of the rich man and the poor man. It may accom- 
plish little or nothing to present the one class with general state- 
ments about the other; what is needed to arouse sympathy and un- 
derstanding is that a life be presented in the concrete, and it seems 
to me that this can be done more effectively in a novel than any 
other way, even than by introducing a living person or by visit- 
ing one in his home and _ surroundings, because then we see 
only the outward which shows the difference, and do not see 
the inner life of thought and feeling which shows the _brother- 
hood. In the novel, and in the novel only, can be shown 
at the same time both the outward and inward life, and this 
not by abstractions but in the form of a fellowman. We see 
that he is influenced by the same motives that are powerful 
with us; we discover our common humanity, and we discover that 
our humanity is common ; and, as one writer says, “‘more is done 
toward linking the higher classes with the lower, toward obliterating 
the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and 
philofophical dissertations.” In the work, then, of extending an 
understanding and sympathy between class and class, and between 
man and man, there is no instrument that can be more effective than 
the novel. 
(3). The novel is incomparably the best means of presenting a 
great deal that is essential to our development. As preliminary to 
the discussion of this point I would like to ask the question : 
What is the greatest in life? What is the summum bonum, the 
ethical end of life? We find this question has been mooted in all 
ages and that philosophical schools still divide upon it ; but the 
highest and truest philosophy answers the question in one word— 
self-vealization. What is the ethical end of life, the swmmum bonum, 
