position, which has prevented it from exhibiting the
highest aspect of things; or, finally, that admitting the view which the
novel presents to be necessarily lower than the poetic, it yet is a more
useful view for man to contemplate.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] This rather obscure phrase may be interpreted as follows: The
average man would like to live such a rounded and symmetrical life as is
portrayed in the novel. He would like to see his wisdom justifying
itself, his vanity triumphant, his selfishness achieving its end; and he
thinks that his cravings are being satisfied. But the deeper laws of the
universe will not be balked, they are lying in wait. And presently when
he thinks, good easy man, his little bourgeois world is rounding into
the perfect sphere, they spring up in his path, shatter his sugar-candy
paradise, and ruthlessly vindicate themselves (that is, prove that they
cannot be disregarded, that they must be reckoned with) by bringing into
his life disorder and misfortune.

[14] As poets were from the republic of Plato. "When any one of these
pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything,
comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we
will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being;
but we must also inform him that in our state such as he are not
permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have
anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we
shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our
souls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will
imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models
which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our
soldiers."--Plato, 'Republic,' III. 398.

D. NATURALISM vs. IDEALISM

15. Much fruitless controversy between naturalism and idealism in art
might have been saved by a consideration of the true character of the
antithesis. It becomes unmeaning as soon as nature is expanded to the
fulness of the idea. And so expanded it may be, for, according to the
old formula, it is always in flux. It is never in being, always in
becoming. As has been already pointed out, it is what we see; and we see
according to higher and lower laws of vision. We may look at man and the
world either from without or from within. We may observe man's actions
like other phenomena, and from observation learn to ascribe the