But it does

Now of course all this is exaggeration. illustrate a tendency and one which is all too usual, the tendency to make ideas the ground of personal anecdote, a tendency which unfortunately obscures their serious import. The non-technical reader is quite right in asking why all books should not be treated as literature and why their meaning should not be derived all in the same way. I have heard cynics announce that literature was wellexpressed nonsense, and then rejoice in their freedom for esthetic contemplation. And to observe the usual comment which is made about literature one would indeed think that only complete absence of thought differentiated what was "literary" from what was not. Yet no one who cares deeply for books can forget that he has got quite as much from the ideas they expressed as from the manner of expression. Human beings are not so decadent that they can dawdle with lovely phrases for a lifetime. There are those moments when, perhaps a bit sheepishly, they turn away to minds which have something to say. They realize then why Dante is more important to the world than Cavalcante, and why Tolstoi will be read when Trollope is a footnote.

The student of literature will grant at this point that the literary essay may indeed be full of meaning, but he will insist that fiction most indubitably contains no ideas. Fiction that establishes a thesis, he will say, is no longer fiction. Poetry which teaches is not poetry. Plays which solve problems are no longer drama. But I am not here speaking of doctrinaire fiction, I am not referring to the allegory, nor to the dramatic tract. I am referring to ordinary novels and plays, novels and plays in which characters are drawn skillfully, a story is told, and the reader enjoys himself. I mean such fiction as Vanity Fair and Macbeth and What Maisie Knew and The Pigeon. And I mean that Vanity Fair has a meaning and that Macbeth has a meaning, and moreover that their meaning is intensified and more adequately expounded than it could ever hope to be in any treatise.

For fiction can treat of human beings as genuine human beings, can present them to us in intelligible forms with all the concreteness of life itself. Fiction can build up individuals, where an ethical treatise is concerned with "the individual." And fiction, while giving us life itself, can illumine the dark places in life and point out hidden splendors. The eye of the novelist can see beneath the mask of men as the eye of the chemist sees beneath the specific appearance of this or that substance to what he calls a more profound law. It is no greater revelation to have pointed out the law of gravitation in the movement of the earth around the sun than to have pointed out the tragedy of indecision in the career of a prince of Denmark.

It may be, it is true, that the knowledge which is perfectly individualized will be of little value to the human mind. For the human mind moves easily only in generalized knowledge. It may be, to be sure, that the knowledge derived from fiction is quite useless. It may in no sense of the word lead to social reform or commercial advantage. But if we are justified in the mere satisfaction of our intellectual needs, the knowledge in question will not be wholly worthless. It will furnish, to an unprecedented extent, an understanding of men as men, and not as "Man."

The meaning in men's lives is not so obscure a matter that it requires especial notice. We have all in a loose way found our friends "incarnations" of this quality, or "perfect embodiments" of that quality. We have our heroes and our villains in life, as well as in books, and there it does not seem out of place. But only too few of us are fitted to grasp the meaning of our fellows or of ourselves. We take them in sporadic glimpses; at no time are we presented with a coherent and unified picture, well-composed, of their total living. They are often the mere experiences of a minute. They are perhaps in this way contributors to our lives, making it more significant than it was before their presence; but they are not the objects

of our study; they have scarcely any meaning as we see them.

Isolate them, however, construct their whole lives from the fragments they afford, and you have before you what they symbolize. You have the symbol and its content in one presentation. Life with its motives-blinded or fulfilled-comes to you revealed, tragic or comic as the case may be. The revelation is a comment about itself; life reflects upon life; the soul looks into the soul and hymns its discoveries.

To expound properly such a theory of fiction would require a volume in itself. I must be content here merely with indicating the facts, hoping that they will initiate further speculation independently on the part of him who happens upon them. I may, however, say that the personal equation will be as important in the writing of fiction as in the taking of astronomical readings. Since the knowledge is so highly individualized, the liability to "error" is of course very great. Two novelists will invariably present you with two different stories arising from the same situation. But such errors are not uninstructive. They demonstrate much more clearly than general uniformity the important complexity, the almost unpredictability, of human behavior.

The methods of interpreting life's problems through fiction will, nevertheless, be equal in number to the methods of interpreting them in other forms. And it is here that the philosopher enters to bring a greater order into an apparent chaos. There are, after all, but a few pre-eminent points of view from which to regard the universe, and it is the philosopher who knows what they are. And, by correlating the attitudes of novelists with these points of view, he has cleared the field for more complete understanding. Zola, for instance, then is placed where he belongs, with the deterministic students of human nature. He is no longer the melodramatic novelist of a melodramatic society. His idea of fiction is strained of its accidental

impurities. Its essential nature shines forth. It becomes an idea among other ideas of its kind. It can then be understood.

An idea so run to ground is an idea worth possessing. For having so run it to ground, you know the very presuppositions which impelled its formulator to propose it. He may not have known them, it is true. Poe, for instance, may never have heard of Heracleitus when he expressed the tragedy of change in To One in Paradise. But he is no less a "weeping philosopher." The profundity of most of our ideas is unknown to us. How seldom do we know the logical grounds of what we believe! But when we have discovered them a more intelligent and saner life is the inevitable result.

So when reading anything, if you know its logical origin, you know it more thoroughly than you did before. And the only supplement you need is the knowledge of its "logical conclusion." To have exposed the ancestry or posterity of an idea is to have understood the idea, and understanding is complete when this process is carried out. During the process one discovers extraordinary kinships. The reformer is thrown in with the conservative, the mystic with the positivist. One discovers how simple our thoughts are in their beginnings and how diverse they are in their implications.

Thus a student of philosophy would insist that "literature" be treated. Here we have considered only fiction. We could use the lyric for our purposes as successfully. Treating literature so would be treating it seriously. It would be naively assuming that words have meanings an assumption often unwarranted-and that meanings are worth understanding. And it would be again naively assuming that to understand is self-justified. If understanding is not itself valuable, of course the whole theory crumbles. If the best life is the least speculative life, the life of decadence, the life of Bunthorne, then the theory is utter nonsense.

UNIVERSITY RECORD

VICTOR H. HENDERSON

The faculty has resolved that the students of the University must be compelled to acquire the habit of correct and effective use of English. All departments are to be expected to co-operate in the new plan of procedure proposed by Professor Benjamin P. Kurtz of the Department of English, adopted by the Academic Senate, and ordered put into effect in August, 1916.

If a student's papers are found unsatisfactory in English expression, he will be warned. If a subsequent paper is found unsatisfactory, the instructor will report the student as "delinquent in English."' A new "Committee on Students' English,'' made up of representatives of various departments, will examine all papers reported faulty in expression. Every student whose English is deemed by this committee below the proper standard will be required to present himself to the Secretary of the committee for instruction in English composition. About once in two weeks the secretary will meet in a body all students who have been intrusted to his care, and give general instruction and criticism. The rest of his time will be devoted to weekly or fortnightly consultations with the students as individuals, for discussion of specially assigned compositions.

There will be no credit for this training. Students may be brought into the course at any time, and must continue until the secretary testifies that their English is satisfactory. In case

of relapse, students must return for further instruction.

It is hoped the plan will at once raise the general level of expression among the students, since it will tend to prevent the carelessness frequently responsible for poor English. Moreover, it is believed that through this plan the students will come to respect good English. And it is the belief of the faculty that in the past the student has been affected by "a certain public