The fact is that the limitation of sculpture and painting and their
kindred arts results from their use of the physical basis of life only
partially, and not as a whole as literature uses it. They set forth
their works in the single element of space; they exclude the changes
that take place in time. The types they show are arrested, each in its
moment; or if a story is told by a series of representations, it is a
succession of such moments of arrested life. The method is that of the
camera; what is given is a fixed state. But literature renders life in
movement; it revolves life through its moments as rapidly as on the
retina of sense; its method is that of the kinetoscope. It holds under
its command change, growth, the entire energy of life in action; it can
chase mood with mood, link act to act. It alone can speak the word,
which is the most powerful instrument of man. Hence the types it shows
by presenting moods, words, and acts with the least obstruction of
matter and the slightest obligation to the active senses, are the most
complete. They have broken the bonds of the flesh, of moment and place.
They exhibit themselves in actions; they speak, and in dialogue and
soliloquy set forth their states of mind lying before, or accompanying,
or following their actions, thus interpreting these more fully. Action
by itself reveals character; speech illumines it, and casts upon the
action also a forward and a backward light. The lapse of time, binding
all together, adds the continuous life of the soul. This large compass,
which is the greatest reached by any art, rests on the wider command and
more flexible control which literature exercises over that physical
basis which is the common foundation of all the arts. Hence it abounds
in complex types, just as other arts present simple types with more
frequency. All types, however, in so far as they appeal to the mind and
interpret the inward world, under which aspect alone they are now
considered, have their physical nature, materially or imaginatively,
even though it be solely visible beauty, in order to express