More important, however, in the history of fiction are those wide
and slow moving currents of opinion, for which prejudice is
perhaps too narrow a name, which flow so imperceptibly through the
minds of a generation or a whole century that there is little
realization of their novelty. Such a slow-moving current was the
humanitarianism which found such vigorous expression in Dickens,
the belief in industrial democracy which is being picked up as a
theme by novelist after novelist to-day, or the sense of the value
of personality and human experience which so intensely
characterizes the literature of the early Renaissance.

If a novel draws up into itself one of these ideas, filling it
with emotion, it gains perhaps its greatest assurance of immediate
popularity. If the idea is of vast social importance, this
popularity may continue. But if it is born of immediate
circumstance, like the hatred of slavery in "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
or if it is still more transient, say, the novelty of a new
invention, like the airplane or wireless, then the book grows
stale with its theme. The like is true of a story that teaches a
lesson a generation are willing to be taught--it lives as long as
the lesson. What has become of Charles Kingsley's novels, of the
apologues of Maria Edgeworth? "Main Street" is such a story; so
was "Mr. Britling Sees It Through"; so probably "A Doll's House."
Decay is already at their hearts. Only the student knows how many
like tales that preached fierily a text for the times have died in
the past. But I am writing of popularity not of permanence. In
four popular novels out of five, even in those where the appeal to
the instinctive emotions is dominant, suspect some prejudice of
the times embodied and usually exploited. It is the most potent of
lures for that ever increasing public which has partly trained