An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times
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Thomas Hill Green >> An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times
_Thomas Hill Green_
_An Estimate of The Value and Influence
Of
Works of Fiction In Modern Times_
_Edited With Introduction and Notes
By
Fred Newton Scott
Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Michigan_
_George Wahr
Ann Arbor
Michigan
1911_
COPYRIGHT
FRED NEWTON SCOTT
1911
THE ANN ARBOR PRESS
ANN ARBOR, MICH.
PREFACE
_For a good many years I have used this essay of Green's with an
advanced class in the theory of prose fiction. It has worked well. It
always arouses discussion, and in doing so it has the great virtue that
it imperiously leads the argument away from superficialities and centers
it upon fundamentals. Its service as a stimulus to high thinking cannot
easily be overestimated. For any student, and especially for one who has
known only the unidea'd criticism of fiction so popular today, it is a
fine thing to come in contact with a high-minded, sturdy, and
uncompromising thinker such as Green is. As Green says of the hearer of
tragedy,_ "He bears about him, for a time at least, among the rank
vapors of the earth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the
higher air." _I trust that this reprint, by making the essay more easily
accessible than it has been heretofore, will help to raise the grade of
student thought and taste and criticism._
F. N. S.
_University of Michigan
December 1, 1910._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction 9
I. PRINCIPLES OF ART 19
a. Epic, Drama, and Novel 19
b. Imitation vs. Art 21
c. Nature the Creation of Thought 22
d. The 'Outward' aspect of Nature 23
e. Conquest of Nature by Art 24
f. The Artist as Idealizer 26
g. The Epic 27
h. Tragedy as Purifier of the Passions 29
i. Tragedy the Elevation of Life 33
j. Conditions Favorable to Tragedy 34
II. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART 35
a. Beginnings of the Novel 35
b. Characteristics of the _Spectator_ 36
c. The Modern Novel a Reflection of Ordinary Life 38
d. Naturalism vs. Idealism 43
e. Tragedy and the Novel 44
f. The Epic and the Novel 47
g. Poetry and Prose 49
h. The Novel an Incomplete Presentation of Life 52
i. Prudence the Novelist's Highest Morality 54
j. Evil Effects of Novel-reading 56
III. TRUE FUNCTION OF THE NOVEL 60
a. A Widener of Experience 60
b. An Expander of Sympathies 63
c. A Creator of Public Sentiment 69
d. A Leveller of Intellects 69
APPENDIX.
a. An Appreciation of Green's Essay 72
b. Hegel on the Novel 77
INTRODUCTION
Thomas Hill Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, April 7, 1836. His
early education was acquired first at home under his father, the rector
of Birkin, then at Rugby, where he was sent at the age of fourteen. In
1855 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and came under the influence of
Jowett, afterwards famous as Master of Balliol and translator of Plato.
Though he matured early, Green was not a brilliant student. On the
contrary, he appeared to be indolent and sluggish. "No man," wrote one
of his fellow-students in 1862, "is driven with greater difficulty to
work not to his taste.... He wrote some of the best college essays: he
never sent them in on the right day, and might generally be seen on the
Monday pondering over essays which every one else had sent in on the
Friday night." These traits, however, as it proved later, were the index
not of a vagrant mind, but of independence of thought and of
preoccupation with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute of
a fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the
impress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself,
and whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original character
wherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with a
love for abstract speculation." In the end, his solid qualities of mind
and character made so strong an impression upon the University
authorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the same
time he became lecturer on ancient and modern history. Though from the
beginning of his student life he had been drawn to an academic career
and especially to the study of philosophy, he was now for a period
undecided what to make his life-work. At one time he thought of going
into journalism in India. In 1864, having accepted a place with the
Royal Commission on Middle Class Schools, he prepared a valuable report
upon the organization of high schools and their relation to the
university. Finally, however, in 1866, his indecision was brought to an
end. Obtaining an appointment in that year to a position on the teaching
staff of Balliol College, he settled down to the work of a tutor in
philosophy. When Jowett was made Master of Balliol, Green became, under
him, the responsible manager of the college, performing the manifold
small duties of the position with patience, thoroughness, and tact.
In 1871 he was married to Miss Charlotte Symonds, sister of John
Addington Symonds.
Twice Green was candidate for a professorship; once in 1864 when he
applied for the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, and again in
1867 when the Waynflate professorship of moral and metaphysical
philosophy fell vacant at Oxford. In both cases he was unsuccessful. It
was not until 1878, by his election to the Whyte's professorship of
moral philosophy, that he obtained the position and the independence he
had long deserved. His enjoyment of the honor was brief. He died of
blood-poisoning, after an illness of only ten days, March 26, 1882.
Green's character was compounded of a variety of elements. The shyness
and reserve characteristic of many cultivated Englishmen, was
accentuated in his case by a natural austerity and an absorption in
serious thought. But though his temper was puritanic and inclined to
moroseness, there was no sourness or cynicism in it. "If," he wrote to
Miss Symonds, "I am rather a melancholy bird, given to physical fatigue
and depression, yet I have never known for a moment what it was to be
weary of life, as the youth of this age are fond of saying that they
are. The world has always seemed very good to me." Grim though he might
be outwardly, he had a keen sense of humor and a warmth of interest in
his fellows that made him, for those who broke through his reserve, a
charming companion. His most characteristic quality was elevation of
mind. In the essay that is here reprinted he speaks of "that aspiring
pride which arises from the sense of walking in intellect on the necks
of a subject crowd." Something of this elevation, this aloofness from
the vulgar, characterized all of his utterances and gave to them at
times a solemn fervency akin to that of the Hebrew prophets. This trait
is finely portrayed in the following description of the tutor Grey (a
thin disguise for Green) in Mrs. Ward's 'Robert Elsmere:'
"In after years memory could always recall to him at will the face
and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk
under the brows, the midland accent, the make of limb and features
which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength
and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the
fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed,
was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the
generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it
overflowed of necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him,
kindling and enriching."
Green's contributions to philosophy were partly constructive, partly
(and perhaps mainly) critical and destructive. On the critical side, his
greatest effort was his attack upon the philosophy of Hume in two
masterly Introductions to an edition of Hume's 'Works,' published in
1874-5. English philosophical thinking, so Green held, had stuck fast
in the scepticism of Hume. Such forward movement in thought as there had
been since the 18th Century, had come mainly through the writings of men
like Wordsworth and Shelley--men who having seen deeply into life, had
expressed themselves in imaginative, not in philosophical ways. To set
the stagnant tide of speculative thinking in motion, involved a two-fold
task: on one side the breaking down of the barriers erected by the
sensationalist and materialist schools of the 17th and 18th centuries,
and on the other side the letting in of a current of fresh ideas from
some source outside of England. The first, or destructive, task Green
performed with remarkable success in the two Introductions. For the new
and truer ideas which were to displace the old, he naturally looked to
Germany, whose methods of research were just coming into vogue at Oxford
through the influence of Pattison and Jowett. And since to speculative
thinkers of that time German philosophy meant the philosophy of Hegel,
Green's fundamental conceptions were derived by Hegelian modes of
thinking. In other words, he was a neo-Hegelian. But, as his biographer
notes, he never committed himself unreservedly to the Hegelian credo.
"While he regarded Hegel's system as the 'last word of philosophy,' he
did not occupy himself with the exposition of it, but with the
reconsideration of the elements in Kant of which it was the
development." That is, he was a neo-Kantian as well as a neo-Hegelian.
Of his constructive thinking in these channels the most complete
embodiment is his 'Prolegomena to Ethics.'
Though naturally his contributions to philosophy are first in bulk and
importance, Green's writings cover a considerable range of subjects.
Listed in the order of publication, they are as follows: 'The Force of
Circumstances,' published in _Undergraduate Papers_, 1858; 'An Estimate
of the Value and Influence of Prose Fiction,' published as a prize
essay, 1862; 'The Philosophy of Aristotle' and 'Popular Philosophy in
its relation to Life,' _North British Review_, Sept., 1866, and March,
1868; Introductions to 'Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' 1874-5; 'The
Grading of Secondary Schools,' _Journal of Education_, May, 1877; Review
of E. Caird's 'Philosophy of Kant,' _Academy_, Sept. 22, 1877; 'Mr.
Spencer on the Relations of Subject and Object,' _Contemporary Review_,
Dec., 1877; 'Mr. Spencer on the Independence of Matter,' _ibid._, March,
1878; 'Mr. Lewes' Account of Experience,' _ibid._, July, 1878; review of
J. Caird's 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,' _Academy_, July
10, 1880; 'Answer to Mr. Hodgson,' _Contemporary Review_, January, 1881;
review of J. Watson's 'Kant and his English Critics,' _Academy_,
September 17, 24, 1881; 'Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Control,'
1881; 'The Work to be done by the New Oxford High School,' 1882;
'Prolegomena to Ethics,' 1883; 'The Witness of God' and 'Faith'
(delivered in 1870 and 1877, and at the time printed for private
circulation), 1884.
All of the foregoing, with the exception of the 'Prolegomena to Ethics,'
are included in the 'Works' edited by R. L. Nettleship (3 Vols., 1885,
2d Ed. 1889, Longmans). The 'Works' contain, in addition, the following
writings not previously published: An essay on 'The Influence of
Civilization on Genius'; an essay on 'Christian Dogma'; an article on
'Mr. Lewes' Account of the Social Medium,' written for the _Contemporary
Review_, but not used; four lectures or addresses on the New Testament;
four lectures on 'The English Commonwealth'; a series of lectures on
'The Philosophy of Kant,' on 'Logic' and on 'The principles of Political
Obligations'; a lecture on 'The Different Senses of Freedom as Applied
to Will and to the Moral Progress of Man'; and a fragment on
'Immortality.'
Aside from occasional references to poetry and art in his philosophical
writings, as, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the
'Prolegomena,' the essay on fiction here reprinted is Green's only
venture in the field of aesthetic criticism. When we remember that it
was one of his earliest productions, having been submitted for the
Chancellor's prize in 1862, when Green was but 26 years of age, the
maturity of both style and contents seems remarkable. It is in fact a
monumental piece of literary criticism, sufficient to establish the
reputation of many a lesser writer. At the same time, however, there is
about it an air of constraint which shows that the author was not at
ease in this kind of speculation. He was fencing, so to speak, with his
left hand. His mind was so absorbed in the metaphysical, ethical, and
religious aspects of experience that upon the aesthetic as such he had
little attention to bestow. When he approached aesthetic problems at all
it was for the purpose of obtaining data which he could employ in other
fields of thought. He was obviously not in sympathy with the aims of
English novelists. He had no expert knowledge of the history of fiction
in England, and no knowledge at all, so far as appears, of its history
in other countries. Probably he misunderstood the relation, in certain
particulars, of the novel to the epic. Nevertheless, his appreciation of
concrete works of art was so genuine and profound, his insight so clear,
his expressed judgments so candid, that any contact of his mind with
art, literary or other, could not fail to be illuminating. Whatever its
limitations, the essay has at least one distinguishing merit: in it a
fundamental principle of criticism is applied with merciless rigor to
the solution of a literary problem. The products of such a method are
certain to be interesting and valuable. Whether we agree with the
author's conclusions or not, we can at least see whence he derives them
and feel the stimulus which always comes from the spectacle of a
powerful mind grappling in deadly earnest with momentous questions of
art and life.
AN ESTIMATE
of the
Value and Influence of
Works of Fiction in
Modern Times
I. PRINCIPLES OF ART
A. EPIC, DRAMA, AND NOVEL
1. We commonly distinguish writings which appeal directly to the
emotions from those of which the immediate object is the conveyance of
knowledge, by applying to the former a term of conveniently loose
meaning, "works of imagination." Of the kinds included in the wide
denotation of this term there are three, between which it seems
difficult at first sight to draw a definite line; which appeal to
similar feelings, and excite a similar interest, in the different ages
to which each is appropriate. These are the epic poem, the drama, and
the novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life and
action, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In each
men are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, but
in co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of two
elements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and
character. In view of these common features, we might be tempted at
first sight to suppose the difference between the three kinds to be
merely one of form, merely the difference between the vehicle of prose
and the vehicle of metre. We shall find, however, on deeper inquiry,
that to the true artist, who does not find his materials in the world,
but creates them according to the inner laws by which the world and
himself are governed, the vehicle is not more a part of his creation
than the "impassioned truth" which it conveys. Here, as elsewhere, form
and substance are inseparable; and the difference of form that
distinguishes the novel from the other kinds of composition which it
seems for the present to have superseded, symbolises, or rather is
identical with, a different potency in the art by which the substance is
created.[1]
FOOTNOTE:
[1] "Though in its most general sense the substance and matter of all
fine art is the same, issuing from the common source of the human desire
for expression, yet the region of fancy corresponding to each medium of
utterance is molded by intercourse with that medium, and acquires an
individuality which is not directly reducible to terms of any other
region of aesthetic fancy. Feeling, in short, is modified in becoming
communicable; and the feeling which has become communicable in music is
not capable of re-translation into the feeling which has become
communicable in painting. Thus the arts have no doubt in common a human
and even rational content--rational in so far as the feelings which are
embodied in expression, for expression's sake, arise in connection with
ideas and purposes; but each of them has separately its own peculiar
physical medium of expression and also a whole region of modified
feeling or fancy which constitutes the material proper to be expressed
in the medium and according to the laws of each particular art."--B.
Bosanquet, 'The Relation of the Fine Arts to One Another' (_Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society_).
B. IMITATION vs. ART
2. Mere copying is not art. The farther the artist rises above the stage
of imitation, the higher is his art, the more elevating its influence on
those who can enter into its spirit. If the landscape-painter does
nothing more than represent nature as seen by the outward eye, the
vulgar objection against looking at pictures--"I can see as fine a view
as this any day"--is unquestionably valid. But if the painter is
anything better than a photographer, he does far more than this. He
brings nature before us, as we have seen it, perhaps, only once or twice
in our lives, under the influence of some strong emotion. He does that
for us which we cannot do for ourselves; he reproduces those moments of
spiritual exaltation in which "we feel that we are greater than we
know"--moments which we can remember, and of which the mere memory may
be the light of our lives, but which no act of our own will can bring
back. It is not till the distinction has been appreciated between nature
as it is and nature as we make it to be, between that which we see and
that which "having not seen we love," that any branch of art can be
reckoned in its proper value.
C. NATURE THE CREATION OF THOUGHT
3. In one sense of the the word, it would no doubt be true to say that
nature is simply and altogether that which we make it to be. Modern
philosophy has discarded the language which represented our knowledge of
things as the result of impressions and the transmission of images.[2]
If we still not only speak but think of ourselves as primarily passive
and in contact with an alien world, this arises simply from the
difficulty of conceiving a pure spontaneous activity. Driven from the
crude imagination which found the primary condition of knowledge in the
reception of "ideas" from without, "common sense" took refuge in the
more refined hypothesis of unknown objects, which cause our sensations,
and through sensations our knowledge.[3] But this standing-ground has
been swept away by the consideration that such a cause may be found
within as well as without, in the laws of the subject's activity as well
as in objects confessedly beyond the reach of cognition. Our ultimate
analysis can find no element in knowledge which is not supplied by
ourselves in conformity to a ruling law, or which exists independently
of the action of human thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] As, _e.g._, in the philosophy of Locke.
[3] Probably referring to Herbert Spencer.
D. THE "OUTWARD" ASPECT OF NATURE
4. But though the world of nature is, in this sense, a world of man's
own creation, it is so in a different way from the world of art and of
philosophy. Thought is indeed its parent, but thought in its primary
stage fails to recognize it as its own, fails to transfer to it its own
attributes of universality, and identity in difference. It sees outward
objects merely in their diversity and isolation. It seeks to penetrate
nature by endless dichotomy, glorying in that dissection of unity which
is the abdication of its own prerogative.[4] It treats outward things
as ministering to animal wants, as the sources of personal and
particular pleasures and pains; and thus induces the sense of bondage,
of collision with a world in which it has not yet learnt to find itself.
It places the end of human life not in harmony with the law which is the
highest form of itself, but in happiness, _i.e._, in the extraction of
the greatest possible amount of enjoyment from a world to which it seems
to be accidentally related. The view of things corresponding to this
stage of thought is what we commonly call their outward aspect. It is
the aspect of matter-of-fact, of logic, of "mere morality," as opposed
to that of art, of philosophy, and religion.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] "Life," says Professor Dewey ('Studies in Logical Theory,' p. 81),
"proposes to maintain at all hazards the unity of its own process." And
in a foot-note he adds: "Professor James's satisfaction in the
contemplation of bare pluralism, of disconnection, of radical
having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. The
satisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brute
diversity becomes itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts
itself in its own denial. When discords are hard and stubborn, and
intellectual and practical unification are far to seek, nothing is
commoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse to an
emotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Religion and art and
romantic affection are full of examples."
E. CONQUEST OF NATURE BY ART
5. The perfection of this of latter and higher view involves the
absolute fusion of thought and things. Its full attainment is a new
creation of the world. Yet it is but the discovery of a relationship
which was from the beginning, the adoption by thought of a child which
was never other than its own. The habitual interpretation of natural
events by the analogy of human design, to which every hour's
conversation testifies, is the evidence that to the ordinary man nature
presents itself not as something external, but, like a friend, as
"another himself." The true conquest of nature is but the completion of
the reconciliation thus anticipated in the everyday language and
consciousness of mankind. When the mind has come to see in the endless
flux of outward things, not a succession of isolated phenomena, but the
reflex of its own development into an infinite variety of laws on a
basis of identity--when the laws of nature are raised to the character
of laws which regulate admiration and love--when the experiences of life
are held together in a medium of pure emotion, and the animal element so
fused with the spiritual as to form one organization through which the
same impulse runs with unimpeded energy--then man has made nature his
own, by becoming a conscious partaker of the reason which animates him
and it.[5] The attainment of this consummation is the end of life: but
it is an end that can never be fully realised, while "dualism" remains a
necessary condition of humanity. To most men it is as a land very far
off, of which occasional glimpses are caught from some "specular mount"
of philosophic or poetic thought. It can only approach realisation
through the operation of a power which can penetrate the whole man, and
act on every moment of his life. But that power, which in the form of
religion can make every meal a sacrament, and transform human passion
into the likeness of divine love, is represented at a lower stage, not
only by the unifying action of speculative philosophy, but by the
combining force of art.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] The same thought may be found, in concrete and poetic form, in
Wordsworth's lines:
"And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains."