himself "for the kingdom of Heaven's sake"--if, perchance, the
kingdom of Heaven might come by observation. The enthusiasm of his
self-denial shows itself in his unavailing struggle to chain
language also to the bare rock of ascertained fact. Metaphor, the
poet's right-hand weapon, he despises; all that is tentative,
individual, struck off at the urging of a mood, he disclaims and
suspects. Yet the very rewards that science promises have their
parallel in the domain of letters. The discovery of likeness in
the midst of difference, and of difference in the midst of
likeness, is the keenest pleasure of the intellect; and literary
expression, as has been said, is one long series of such
discoveries, each with its thrill of incommunicable happiness, all
unprecedented, and perhaps unverifiable by later experiment. The
finest instrument of these discoveries is metaphor, the
spectroscope of letters.

Enough has been said of change; it remains to speak of one more of
those illusions of fixity wherein writers seek exemption from the
general lot. Language, it has been shown, is to be fitted to
thought; and, further, there are no synonyms. What more natural
conclusion could be drawn by the enthusiasm of the artist than that
there is some kind of preordained harmony between words and things,
whereby expression and thought tally exactly, like the halves of a
puzzle? This illusion, called in France the doctrine of the mot
propre, is a will o' the wisp which has kept many an artist dancing
on its trail. That there is one, and only one way of expressing
one thing has been the belief of other writers besides Gustave
Flaubert, inspiriting them to a desperate and fruitful industry.
It is an amiable fancy, like the dream of Michael Angelo, who loved
to imagine that the statue existed already in the block of marble,