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through their limbs, save the simplest feats of motion, has to be secured by the adaptation of organs little fitted for peculiar arts, an adaptation which is accomplished by the exercise of thought. When the vertebrate series culminated in the higher anthropoids, the unknown ancestors of man, the need of the creature led to the abandonment of the horizontal progression and all the extensive morphological changes which were necessary to plant the form on the hinder limbs. This was a serious sacrifice of the conditions of strength to the needs of the developing rationality.

It seemed to the Greeks that for the condition of perfect physical and mental life in one animal there should be four limbs for progression and two for the purposes of the hands, and so they imagined the centaur. But if the vertebrate series had been provided with three pairs of limbs, especially if that form had had in addition to the limbs the wings and other functional appendages of insects, it is easy to see that the intelligence developed by the exercise of the faculties in this amply provided body could hardly have advanced beyond the automatic condition which we find in the articulate animals. In all the forms below man in the vertebrate series the limitation of appendages has probably been in the main disadvantageous, but when the last stage of the organic problem came, namely, the development of rationality, every one of these disadvantages becomes the most consummate of all adaptations which we find in the organic world, for to it we probably owe the development of rational thought.

We have now briefly sketched the argument on which we may rest a theory of design. This theory in its general character is essentially unlike that which has been overthrown, though the resemblance to it will probably be sufficient to excite prejudice in many minds. It seems to me, however, as we stated at the outset of the argument, that the hypothesis of design is quite as legi, timate as the hypothesis of chance. It seems furthermore that the hypothesis of design controlling the general trend of organic development, leaving at the same time the details to be worked out by selection and other influences, is also in its way legitimate.

It is hardly necessary to state that the foregoing argument does not prove in a mathematical way the existence of purpose in the universe. It only affords a dilemma which may be stated as follows: namely, either intelligence in the high form in which we find it in man is the result of a fortuitous concatenation of unadjusted impulses dependent on one chance in a practically infinite number of possibilities, or that this life of man is the product of

control. In the end it is left to the student to judge which of the two views is most satisfactory to his spirit.

It should furthermore be said that the foregoing argument does not effectually assail the position held by those who take the purely mechanical view of the universe. On the basis of their argument it is still possible to maintain that this apparent order is the result of fortuity alone. Where the reasoner adopts the purely mechanical hypothesis and resists in an obstinate way the impressions which contact with nature serves to bring to his mind, there appears to me no way by which he can logically be driven from his position. It seems to me that he is in the attitude of a person who should postulate that there was a limit to the physical universe. If we should take such a person to the utmost bounds of the known world, he might still claim that the limit lay yet beyond that place, and however far we should journey, there would be no point at which his claim could be shown to be invalid. The advocate of the mechanical theory is by his assumption entitled to deny the influence of the ideal in the universe. The naturalist from his contact with the world obtains a sense of ideals: if that contact be extensive and varied, he generally comes to believe that some form of will is operative in nature. Trusting to this overwhelming impression and founding his hypothesis upon it, it appears to me that he is justified in the argument which I have pursued. The only answer he can make to the advocate of the mechanical hypothesis is, that contact with nature brings him to a state of mind which opposes the mechanical view, and that on the conviction obtained by such a contact he is compelled to found his reasoning.

All that can be claimed for this method of presenting the problem of design is that it puts the idealist into a better position as regards his method of treating facts than that which was secured by the method adopted by the school of Paley. Following the plan of discussion which I have been compelled to present in a very condensed form, we avoid the difficulties with the argument which are necessarily encountered by those who trust to the facts exhibited in the devices of organic forms and which may be the result of inherited experience alone.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

N. S. Shaler.

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MODERN NOVEL.

STUDENTS of the history of literature find it impossible to regard any species of literary composition as wholly peculiar to the present era. Each species, as now cultivated, is a development with its roots in the past. However much insight into the character of any literary product we may gain by regarding it as the child of its own age, we are also compelled to remember that its ancestors, with their hereditary traits, must be sought for in previous ages. And yet it may be claimed that, in some important meaning of the words, novel-writing and novel-reading are peculiarly significant of modern times. Certainly, no other species of literature, and perhaps no other form of artistic performance, or of æsthetic and ethical influence and cultivation, has had in the last century so surprising a growth as this kind of romantic composition. In some sort, then, the production and use of novels are distinctive of our era. And this is true whether we consider chiefly the number of them and of their readers, or the excellence of the art which the better examples display, or, finally, the astonishing effect which they are producing upon the mental and moral life of the people.

If the word "romance" be used with a range of meaning wide enough to include all the literature of fiction, it may be claimed that every subordinate species of such literature was represented, or foreshadowed, among the Greek and Latin authors. But in order to make this claim valid, it is necessary to use the word "foreshadowed" in a somewhat vague and expansive fashion, and to include among "the Greek and Latin authors" those who wrote in the post-classical periods of Italy and Byzantium. Even then, although we find in both these literatures specimens of fables and tales, marvelous voyages, collections of fictitious letters, stories of love and adventure, as well as prose fictions with a philosophical, historical, or religious bent, the nearest ancient approaches to the modern novel differ from it in several important respects.

It was only after the close of the classical period of literature that fictitious and rhetorical prose composition began greatly to flourish among the readers of the Greek and Latin languages. "It was late, however, and after the decline of its nobler literature,' says Dunlop, "that fictions in prose came to be cultivated as a species of composition in Greece." It is suggestive, also, as pre

paring the way for understanding the psychology of the modern novel, to notice that this development of prose fiction shows the influence of the Orient on the Western civilization, and that it took place in a degenerate age. Excessive delight and unceasing practice in telling and hearing tales belong to a condition in which a luxurious imagination, easy morals, and much leisure are combined. It was the Ionians, a people who were in their manner of living almost as much Asiatic as Greek, that earliest became especially famous for these tales, and among them, preeminently, the inhabitants of Miletus. Hence they were known as "Milesian tales." Moreover, the peculiar favor these prose fictions gained at this time was undoubtedly due to the fact that they were much easier writing and reading than the classic drama, or than the forms of romantic poetical literature which had preceded them.

In the literature of the Middle Ages the romances derived from antiquity were perpetuated in certain pseudo-classical works. And it is through these imitations of compositions which in their original form belong to a degenerate age and style of literature, that the modern novel must in part trace its descent. The Greek and Latin romance showed its inferiority by confining itself to a "hackneyed circle" of incidents, and by the effort to compensate for a lack of real invention, and of real insight into the human heart and human life, by crowding the scene with astonishing incidents. Two lovers of superhuman beauty, two or three persecuting husbands and amorous princes, several pirates and banditti, formed the chief dramatis personce of almost all these more ancient tales. But the legend of Troy was the captivating subject for the pseudo-classical works of the Middle Ages.

Another class of prose romances, however, was undoubtedly the more influential historical factor in producing the modern novel. This comprised such mediæval prose fictions as dealt with the characters and exploits of knightly heroes, and grouped themselves in various cycles about King Arthur and the Round Table, Charlemagne and his peers, Amadis of Gaul, and various less celebrated personages. Connected with these larger cycles are other tales of minor importance, recounting the exploits of outlaws, or the final vindication of some chaste wife wrongfully accused of infidelity, and perhaps unjustly punished for a fault only alleged. These progenitors of the modern novel also show somewhat the same poverty of artistic resources as that which char

acterized the yet earlier romantic literature of the Greeks and Romans.

In tracing the origin of the modern novel historically, it would be necessary to point out how the mediæval romance faded away during the seventeenth century, and at the close of this period the present form of prose fiction began more definitely and widely to be produced. In England the development of romantic literature was doubtless much influenced by the great power and brilliancy of the dramatic compositions and the stage of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably the recent decline, in quality and favor, of the products designed for theatrical representation, has operated on the whole to increase the influence, and improve the character, of prose fictions designed to be read.

But our point of view is not chiefly historical; and the few remarks which have already been made are introductory to the subject of the modern novel, that it may be looked at from another point of view.

All literature is the expression of human thought and feeling; it is also addressed to the thinking and feeling mind of man. It is both of and to the human soul. Whatever its historical origin and historical course of development may be, it has always a yet more interior source from which it springs, a law of spiritual descent and classification to which it must conform. What is thus necessarily true of all literature is, of course, true of the kind of literature called "romantic," and of the particular species which the modern novel constitutes. Indeed, romantic literature is of all kinds the most obviously derivable from, the most strictly subject to,. the simpler and more interesting and impressive activities and principles of the human mind. Of the modern novel, then, we raise the question: From what forms of mental impulse does it arise, and to what forms of human desire and want does it minister? And to justify ourselves in raising this inquiry into the psychological origin and import of the modern novel, we appeal to the facts of history. The types and foreshadows and precursors of this peculiar species of literature may, indeed, be discovered in all the history of literature. But within the last century, or somewhat more, this species has undergone the most rapid and marked development. It has developed in such a manner and to such a degree as to become, to a large extent, distinctive of the modern era of literature. There must be certain valid reasons in the human mind for both these historical truths.

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