sensibly shown in imagination, to know the invisible things of
personality and experience, and to set them forth as a spiritual order,
is the main end of ideal art. Though in plot the outward order is
brought into the fullest prominence, and may seem to occupy the field,
yet it is significantly only the shadow of that order within.

In thus presenting plot as the means by which the history of a single
soul is externalized, one important element has been excluded from
consideration. The causal chain of events, which constitutes plot, has a
double unity, answering to the double order of phenomena in action as a
state of mind and a state of external fact. Under one aspect, so much
of the action as is included in any single life and is there a linked
sequence of mental states, has its unity in the personality of that
individual. Under the other aspect, the entire action which sets forth
the relations of all the characters involved, of their several courses
of experience as elements in the working out of the joint result, has
its unity in the constitution of the universe,--the impersonal order,
that structure of being itself, which is independent of man's will,
which is imposed upon him as a condition of existence, and which he must
accept without appeal. This necessity, to give it the best name, to
which man is exposed without and subjected within, is in its broadest
conception the power that increases life, and all things are under its
sway. Its sphere is above man's will; he knows it as immutable law in
himself as it is in nature; it is the highest object of his thoughts.
Its workings are submitted to his observation and experiment as a part
of the world of knowledge; he sees its operation in individuals, social
groups, and nations, and sets it forth in the action of the lyric, the
drama, and the epic as the law of life. In its sphere is the higher
unity of plot by virtue of which it integrates many lives in one main
action. Such, then, is the nature of plot as intermediary between man