The New York herald., 1872-12-08
our country-one in which all pious people
are deeply interested. and one which should
not be overlooked by our brethren of the cleri-
cal press everywhere
Scientific Fiction.

About year ago Charles Reade's "Ter-
rible Temptation threw prudery into convul-
sions. Formally hid her face and sanctimony
blushed to the eyelids Obstetrics had invaded
the precincts of fiction, and one Of the most
popular novelists of the age was nothing if
not parturient Already the equivocal theme
had been tenderly touched in "Grifith
Gaunt )" but in the later novel simulated
dccoucse'nem was deliberately introduced as an
essential point of art. Fielding himself might
have hesitated before treading such delicate
ground, Alfred de Musset have drawn back
and George Sand said sNo, thank you."
But before censuring Mr. Reade too abso-
lutely let US ask the motive of such audacity
To be original was no longer easy Miss
Austen had painted the superficies of society
with innumerable minute and marvellously
vivid touches Scott had filed his spacious
canvas with panorama crowded with
pageants and princes. Bulwer had beguiled
history into becoming romance, and infused
Herewith sentimentalism somewhat efemi-
nate, to be sure, but full of warmth and rich
ness. Dickens had glorifed realism with
pathos and humor irresistibly contagious.
Thackeray's sharp-eyed cynicism had put on
the neutral tinted glosses of charity and seen
all the better for that tempering medium.
Trollopes pictures were a sort Of still life,
with human element breathed into it, And
George Eliot, with but an iota of her individ-
uality obtruding itself, had done with the hu-
manity with whom she came in contact what
Rosa Bonheur had done with animals, and re-
produced it with sub-creative power almost
unparalleled in the annals of literature. If
anything new remained to be done the task
was at least difficult Wilkie Collins had re-
fined upon Mrs. Radcliffe with delicacy and
ingenuity which left nothing to be expected in
that line, and Mr.. Fargeon, possessing at once
eccentricties which affiliate him with Mr..
Dickens, and broad philanthropic tempera-
ment and poetic organization of which COM
paratively little trace is evident in the works
of that great humorist, had woven Australian
romance and English realism into a fabric
which had touched the hearts alike Of average
and of esoteric circles. Since the day when
''Tom Jones' broke upon the world the task
Of introducing new element into fiction had
never been so difficult
The future will doubtless give birth to quite
as startling and quite as successful attempts
as that of Mr.. Reade. Science has laid her
hand upon art, literature, and even the drama,
and will not loose her hold. The literary
critic is fond of claiming that some day the
last novel will have been written, since all the
combinations of which human characters and
events are susceptible will have been ex-
hausted But those who make this claim take
it for granted that these characters and events
are determinate in number, and therefore sub
ject to the arithmetical rule Of Formulation.
For all practical purposes, however, the combi-
nation brought about by the relations of char
acter to circumstances may be assumed as
infinite Or if, as Professor Fiske, the Har-
ward sceptic, maintains, humanity, having had
beginning will one day have an end, that
end is vastly too remote to be taken into con-
sideration in the present argument AS the
race progresses the various objects which en-
ploy it's thoughts and energies will indefinitely
increase, and must sooner or later be reflected
in literature. But as the basis of hu-
manity ever remains the same, we may
safely assume that romance, in some form or
other, will always flourish and mirror the
transition stages in humanitys career Thus
the history of fiction will, to a certain extent,
be the history of the human mind, conclu-
sion borne out by facts. Those social phases
which are reflected in English and American
literature to-day immensely differ from those
L. kol
years hence. Already we stand on the verge
of new era in fiction-the scientific era Mr..
Darwin having plausibly argued that the
genuine Adam and Eve were apes and Pro-
fessor Huxley, with his protoplasmic theories,
having reasoned original creative power into
a phantasm, mankind's tenderest traditions
are trodden under foot, and, convinced against
our will, we are compelled to abandon ruefully
the old paths Of sentiment, and to ask what
romanesque interest inheres in these later and
sterner facts. Science has crept into the
hiding places of faith and aspiration. Our
creeds are called credulities and our forms
formula. Tyndall applies his gauge to prayer,
and next we suppose, we shall have love to
God and man settled by logarithms. Only
year ago Mr.. James Steele Mackaye attempted
to show that acting was sort Of alge-
bra, in which any one might learn to
solve the histrionic equation In the recent
play of 'Pygmalion and Galatea," the pro-
cess by which the statue disappeared is a
salient instance of the sireness with which
science is getting the upper hand Of art. AS
scientific experiment the process was beautiful
and interesting; as an illustration of dramatic
art it was in miserably bad taste. In the
novel the encroachment is equally evident and
Mr. Reade, as we have already intimated is
an evidence Of how heavily the hand of physi-
ology may be laid upon fiction. His latest
hero is o physician, who comes near being
tilted for venturing to hint that the heroine,