14. CHAPTER XIV.
WORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE
WORTH CONSIDERING.
As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking
forwards, so the present must consist of one glancing
backwards.
To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one
so full of confidence, as the merchant has throughout
shown himself, up to the moment of his late sudden impulsiveness,
should, in that instance, have betrayed such
a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent,
and even so he is. But for this, is the author to be
blamed? True, it may be urged that there is nothing
a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there
is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for,
than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency
should be preserved. But this, though at first blush,
seeming reasonable enough, may, upon a closer view,
prove not so much so. For how does it couple with
another requirement—equally insisted upon, perhaps—
that, while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention,
yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory
to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent
character is a
rara avis? Which being so, the distaste
of readers to the contrary sort in books, can hardly arise
from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be
from perplexity as to understanding them. But if the
acutest sage be often at his wits' ends to understand
living character, shall those who are not sages expect to
run and read character in those mere phantoms which
flit along a page, like shadows along a wall? That
fiction, where every character can, by reason of its consistency,
be comprehended at a glance, either exhibits
but sections of character, making them appear for
wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the
other hand, that author who draws a character, even
though to common view incongruous in its parts, as the
flying-squirrel, and, at different periods, as much at
variance with itself as the butterfly is with the caterpillar
into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be
not false but faithful to facts.
If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent
characters as nature herself has. It must call
for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate
in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception
and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only
guide here; but as no one man can be coextensive with
what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it.
When the duck-billed beaver of Australia was first
brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing
to their classifications, maintained that there was, in
reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen
must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on.
But let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce
her duck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors,
some may hold, have no business to be perplexing
readers with duck-billed characters. Always, they
should represent human nature not in obscurity, but
transparency, which, indeed, is the practice with most
novelists, and is, perhaps, in certain cases, someway felt
to be a kind of honor rendered by them to their kind.
But whether it involve honor or otherwise might be
mooted, considering that, if these waters of human
nature can be so readily seen through, it may be either
that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon the
whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view
of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that,
in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that
it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation
of it than he who, by always representing it in a
clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows
all about it.
But though there is a prejudice against inconsistent
characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other
way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency,
afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be
their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing
so much as in this very particular. They challenge
astonishment at the tangled web of some character,
and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory
unraveling of it; in this way throwing open,
sometimes to the understanding even of school misses,
the last complications of that spirit which is affirmed
by its Creator to be fearfully and wonderfully
made.
At least, something like this is claimed for certain
psychological novelists; nor will the claim be here
disputed. Yet, as touching this point, it may prove
suggestive, that all those sallies of ingenuity, having for
their end the revelation of human nature on fixed principles,
have, by the best judges, been excluded with
contempt from the ranks of the sciences—palmistry,
physiognomy, phrenology, psychology. Likewise, the
fact, that in all ages such conflicting views have, by the
most eminent minds, been taken of mankind, would, as
with other topics, seem some presumption of a pretty
general and pretty thorough ignorance of it. Which
may appear the less improbable if it be considered that,
after poring over the best novels professing to portray
human nature, the studious youth will still run risk of
being too often at fault upon actually entering the world;
whereas, had he been furnished with a true delineation,
it ought to fare with him something as with a stranger
entering, map in hand, Boston town; the streets may be
very crooked, he may often pause; but, thanks to his true
map, he does not hopelessly lose his way. Nor, to this
comparison, can it be an adequate objection, that the
twistings of the town are always the same, and those of
human nature subject to variation. The grand points of
human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand
years ago. The only variability in them is in expression,
not in feature.
But as, in spite of seeming discouragement, some
mathematicians are yet in hopes of hitting upon an exact
method of determining the longitude, the more earnest
psychologists may, in the face of previous failures, still
cherish expectations with regard to some mode of infallibly
discovering the heart of man.
But enough has been said by way of apology for
whatever may have seemed amiss or obscure in the
character of the merchant; so nothing remains but to turn
to our comedy, or, rather, to pass from the comedy of
thought to that of action.
