fitness in the general scheme begin to be comprehended. In the
perspective of history we can derive an æsthetic pleasure from the
tranquil scrutiny of all kinds of conduct--as well, for example, of a
Renaissance Pope as of a Savonarola. Observation endows our day and our
street with the romantic charm of history, and stimulates charity--not
the charity which signs cheques, but the more precious charity which
puts itself to the trouble of understanding. The one condition is that
the observer must never lose sight of the fact that what he is trying to
see is life, is the woman next door, is the man in the train--and not a
concourse of abstractions. To appreciate all this is the first inspiring
preliminary to sound observation.




IV


The second preliminary is to realise that all physical phenomena are
interrelated, that there is nothing which does not bear on everything
else. The whole spectacular and sensual show--what the eye sees, the ear
hears, the nose scents, the tongue tastes and the skin touches--is a
cause or an effect of human conduct. Naught can be ruled out as
negligible, as not forming part of the equation. Hence he who would
beyond all others see life for himself--I naturally mean the novelist
and playwright--ought to embrace all phenomena in his curiosity. Being
finite, he cannot. Of course he cannot! But he can, by obtaining a broad
notion of the whole, determine with some accuracy the position and
relative importance of the particular series of phenomena to which his
instinct draws him. If he does not thus envisage the immense background