The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1885-10-22
The Man of Letters.

When Balzac of Thackeray. George
Eliot or George Sand is the story-teller
we are all listeners, the wise and
learned as we'll as the ignorant and
foolish. But the writer of romantic
fiction is especially the minister of the
ideal to the multitude. who, as they
gaze on the masterpieces of the
painter and the sculptor, having eyes
see not, who have no ears to hear the
message of the poet, the philosopher.
the musician. Mr.. Carlyle scornfully
abandons to him ''children. minors.
and semifatuous persons. Well, but
Mr.. Carlyle himself being Judge.
children, minors, and semifatuous
persons constitute the vast majority of
''our own flesh and blood Twenty
five millions. chiefly fools!' Perhaps.
Yet we may be quite sure that in the
most foolish the heart does not exist
that has never throbbed with a deep
emotion nor the intellect that has
never harbored true thought, nor the
imagination that has never nursed a
dream of beauty. In the dullest, the
| least cultivated, as in the most richly
endowed and highly disciplined of our
race. we may discern what the historian
of materialism confesses to be 1.-The
same necessity, the same transcenden-
tai root of our nature, which leads us
| to fashion world of the ideal, whether
we may escape from the limitations of
the senses to find there the home of
our spirit.' THE man of letters has
a cure OF souls, great French writer
has well said. This is particularly
true of those who work in that
! department OF romantic fiction the in
t1uence of which in this age is so great
and is ever increasing. 1t is their
vocation to refine, to elevate, to moral
ize. And here comes in the essential
difference between their function and
that of the physicist. To physical
science nothing is filthy or impure.
The student in its domain takes all the
| facts and catalogues them in the order
OF their Importance. reducing them to
formulas. lie deals with matter.
Ethics is sphere INTO which he does
not enter. Far other is it with the
writer of fiction. In the first place, h.
is not concerned with all the facts.
His work is essentially poetical, and
the primary duty of the poet is choice,
which is governed by those eternal
laws, those necessary conventions rul-
ing throughout the domain of art.
The great ethical principals of reserve,
shame, reverence, which have their
endless applications in civilized life.
prescribe limits to imagination as to
action. There arc moods of thought
which do not yield in Nervousness to
the worst decds-moods of madness,
suicidal and polluting To leave them
in the dark is to help toward suppre>o
ing them. And this is a sacred duty.
1--WE arc bound to reticence," saws
George Eliot. ''most of all by that rcvcr-
encc tor the highest efforts of our COM
mon nature, which commands us to
bury its lowest fatalities, its invincible
remnants OF the brute, it; most agoniz-
ing struggles with temptation, in I'M
broken silence" The main theme of
the novelist, the dramatist, is ever the
passion of love-the most common. the
most impctuous of human sentiments.
But love is not to him what it is to the
psychologist mere animal impulse
which man has in common with moths
and mollusca. His task is to extract
from human life, even in its commonest
aspects. its most vulgar realities. what
it contains of secret beauty; to lift it to
the level OF art not to degrade art to