is never obliged to account for his possession of
intimate information. He can observe events which happen at the same
time in places widely separated. Darkness cannot dim his eyes; locked
doors cannot shut him out. He can be with a character when that
character is most alone. He can make clear to us the thoughts that
do not tremble into speech, the emotions that falter and subside into
inaction. He can know, and can convey to us, how much of a person's
real thought is expressed, and how much is concealed, by the language
that he uses. And the reader seeks no motive to account for the
narrator's revelation of the personal secrets of the characters.

The omniscient point of view is the only one that permits upon a
large scale the depiction of character through mental analysis. It is
therefore usually used in the "psychological novel." It was employed
always by George Eliot, and has been selected almost always by Mr.
Meredith. It is, of course, invaluable for telling the sort of story
whose main events are mental, or subjective. A spiritual experience
which does not translate itself into concrete action can be viewed
adequately only from the god-like point of view. But when it is
employed in the narration of objective events, the writer runs the
danger of undue abstractness. A certain vividness--a certain immediacy
of observation--are likely to be lost, because of the aloofness from
the characters of the mind that sees them.

This point of view is at once the most easy and the most difficult
that the author may assume. Technically it is the easiest, because the
writer is absolutely free in the selection and the patterning of his
narrative materials: but humanly it is the most difficult, because it
is hard for any man consistently to play the god, even toward his own
fictitious creatures. Although George Eliot assumes omniscience of
Daniel Deronda, the consensus of opinion among men of sound judgment
is that she does not really know her hero. Deronda is in truth a
lesser person than she thinks him; and her assumption of omniscience
breaks down. In fact, unless an author is gifted with the god-like
wisdom of Mr. Meredith, he is almost sure to break down in the
effort to sustain the omniscient attitude consistently throughout a
complicated novel.

Therefore, in assuming a point of view external to the characters, it
is usually wiser for the author to accept a compromise and to
impose certain definite limits upon his own o