ir remotest origin, telling
the why and wherefore of every impulse, and detecting every reaction
of the soul's movements under the promptings of interest, passion, or
instinct.

The partisans of objectivity--odious word--aiming, on the contrary, at
giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully
avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and
confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In
their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in
reality, under the facts of existence.

The novel as conceived of on these lines gains in interest; there is
more movement in the narrative, more color, more of the stir of life.

Hence, instead of giving long explanations of the state of mind of an
actor in the tale, the objective writer tries to discover the action
or gesture which that state of mind must inevitably lead to in that
personage, under certain given circumstances. And he makes him so
demean himself from one end of the volume to the other, that all his
actions, all his movements shall be the expression of his inmost
nature, of all his thoughts, and all his impulses or hesitancies. Thus
they conceal psychology instead of flaunting it; they use it as the
skeleton of the work, just as the invisible bony framework is the
skeleton of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does
not display our bones.

To me it seems that the novel executed on this principle gains also in
sincerity. It is, in the first place, more probable, for the persons
we see moving about us do not divulge to us the motives from which
they act.

We must also take into account the fact that, even if by close
observation of men and women we can so exactly ascertain their
characters as to predict their behavior under almost any
circumstances, if we can say decisively: "Such a man, of such a
temperament, in such a case, will do this or that"; yet it does not
follow that we could lay a finger, one by one, on all the secret
evolutions of his mind--which is not our own; all the mysterious
pleadings of his instincts--which are not the same as ours; all the
mingled promptings of his nature--in which the organs, nerves, blood,
and flesh are different from ours.

However great the genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of
passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely
transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent
man