ations of family, of territory, or of class, prevent the
proper fusion of parts into the whole. The work of the reformer
progresses as the social force is brought to bear more and more fully on
classes and individuals, merging distinctions of privilege and position
in the one social organism. The novel is one of the main agencies
through which this force acts. It gathers up manifold experiences,
corresponding to manifold situations of life; and subordinating each to
the whole, gives to every particular situation a new character, as
qualified by all the rest. Every good novel, therefore, does something
to check what may be called the despotism of situations; to prevent that
ossification into prejudices arising from situation, to which all feel a
tendency. The general novel literature of any age may be regarded as an
assertion by mankind at large, in its then development, of its claims,
as against the influence of class and position; whether that influence
appear in the form of positive social injustice, of oppressive custom,
or simply of deficient sympathy.

24. To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large powers of
sympathetic observation. He must have an eye for the "humanities" which
underlie the estranging barriers of social demarcation, and in relation
to which the influence of those barriers can alone be rightly
appreciated. We have already spoken of that acquiescence in the dominion
of circumstance, to which we are all too ready to give way, and which
exclusive novel-reading tends to foster. The circumstances, however,
whose rule we recognise, are apt to be merely our own or those of our
class. We are blind to other "idola" than those of our own cave; we do
not understand that the feelings which betray us into "indiscretions"
may, when differently modified by a different situation, lead others to
game-stealing or trade-outrages. From this narrowness of view the
novelist may do much to deliver us. The variations of feeling and
action with those of circumstance, and the essential human identity
which these variations cannot touch, are his special province. He shows
us that crime does not always imply sin, that a social heresy may be the
assertion of a native right, that an offence which leads to conventional
outlawry may be merely the rebellion of a generous nature against
conventional tyranny. Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much.
Though he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at lea