admitted, since only thus can it interest the mind which has its whole
life in the pursuit and its whole joy in the possession of truth. But if
it be meant that abstract or moral instruction has been made the
business of literature, the charge may be met with a disclaimer, as
should be evident, first, from the emphasis placed on its concrete
dealing with persons and actions. On the contrary, literature fails in
art precisely in proportion as it becomes expressly such a teacher.
Secondly, the life which literature organizes, the whole of human nature
in its relation to the world, is many-sided; and imaginative genius, the
creative reason, grasps it in its totality. The moral aspect is but one
among many that life wears. If ethics are implicit in the mass of life,
so also are beauty and passion, pathos, humour, and terror; and in
literature any one of these may be the prominent phase at the moment,
for literature gives out not only practical moral wisdom, but all the
reality of life. Literature is didactic in the reproachful sense of the
word only in proportion as type and plot are distinctly separated from
the truth they embody, and ceases to be so in proportion as these are
blended and unified. The fable is one of the most ancient forms of such
didactic literature; in it a story is told to enforce a lesson, and
animals are made the characters, in consequence of which it has the
touch of humour inseparable from the spectacle of beasts playing at
being men; but the very fact that the moral is of men and the tale is of
beasts involves a separation of the truth from its concrete embodiment,
and besides the moral is stated by itself. In the Oriental apologue an
advance is made. The parables of our Lord, in particular, are admirable
examples of its method. The characters are few, the situations common,
the action simple, and the moral truth or lesson enforced is so
completely clothed in the tale that it needs no explanation; at the same
time, the mind is aware of the teacher. In the higher forms of
literature, however, the fusion of ethics with life may be complete.