k is his own conceptive and executive power,
unless he foolishly subjects himself to the bondage of some special
school. As time goes on, his own essential bent of mind and heart will
gradually reveal to him the sort of matter he can handle best.

The influence upon the fiction writer's philosophy of the aim and
necessity to interest may now be discussed.

An important point is that there are degrees of interest. A strongly
novel course of events will catch and hold a reader's interest, but the
interest aroused by a fiction presenting a novel course of events and
nothing else is not quite the same thing as the interest aroused by a
story which shows real men and women meeting the real problems of life,
material or spiritual. The interest aroused by mere novelty is a matter
largely of the intelligence; it tends to be evanescent because it has
little or no relation to the emotional nature. On the other hand, the
other sort of interest, that aroused by the spectacle of real men and
women meeting the real problems of life, is deepened and intensified by
the emotional element of sympathy and hate for lovable and hateful
people. And the real, though perhaps intrinsically simple problems of
life--to make a living, win love, overcome temptation--are precisely the
problems which are humanly significant because universally experienced.
The story which shows real people struggling with such a problem will
have a keener interest for a reader through his familiarity with its
matter in personal experience. Such a story appeals to the emotions both
through its people and through its theme.

This matter is well worth dwelling upon, for, apart from merit in point
of executive artistry, the only standard whereby a story can be
estimated as relatively significant or relatively insignificant is the
standard of interest, that is, interest for the ideal reader, the reader
of open and able mind and sympathetic heart. The aim of fiction is to
interest, and the story which most deeply interests most completely
fulfils the ideals of the art. "Les Miserables" is a greater book than
any one of Jules Verne's mechanical romances, not because it is better
written, and not because it is a terrific indictment of society--as a
modern reviewer might put it--but simply because its people and matter
generally arouse the most poignant emotional and intellectual interest
in a reader qualified to feel its power. The interest aroused by Verne's
sort of story