literature? — a most interesting inquiry, which only a volume could answer satisfactorily. Frederic Harrison, speaking of the literary production of the Victorian Era, says: "Our literature today has many characteristics; but its central note is the dominant influence of sociology-enthusiasm for social truths as an instrument of social reform." 1 And again: "For good or for evil, our literature is now absorbed in the urgent social problem, and is become but an instrument in the vast field of sociology the science of society." 2 This is certainly of interest as indicating the opinion of one writer of authority concerning literature's debt to sociology. Miss Vida D. Scudder, in Social Ideals in English Letters, has given distinct and intelligent recognition to the same indebtedness in a much wider field of English literature. Both of these writers are skilful literary critics, but the latter, at least, is not known to have specialized to any extent in the department of scientific sociology. It is probably not too much to say that both Mr. Harrison and Miss Scudder have written from the standpoint of literature rather than that of sociology.

One may well question the literal accuracy of Mr. Harrison's statement that our literature "is become but an instrument in the vast field of

1 Studies in Victorian Literature, p. 13.

sociology." That is certainly putting too strongly the truth which every student of literature must recognize. That the interests of man as man, and that the interests of society, are finding literary expression as never before is undoubtedly true, though it would be impossible to deny that social interests of some kind have been represented in the literature of every period. The difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The attitude toward what we call social questions in the literature of any period is in general a reflection of the time in which the book was written. Some writers of fiction and of verse represent the advance guard, and some the stragglers, in the army of progress; but in general they hold the mirror up to their own time. The materialization in literature of the mirrored image is of great significance to the student of society, for there he can find concretely portrayed the men and the manners, the conditions and the conflicts, the thoughts, feelings, and ideals, which write social history. Even before the days of Pope and Swift and Richardson and Fielding, social history was being thus written, and since their time the remarkable development of the novel and other forms of literary expression has given greatly increased opportunities for the faithful representation of social facts and forces.

and novelists for our knowledge of the social conditions of any period. The view of an epoch acquired entirely from this source would be as one-sided and inadequate as a view obtained from the study of history alone. History and literature may be, and should be, correctives of each other. In fact, if certain modern critics are right, very few histories have ever been written. Most books called by this name have been merely records of the accessions and dethronements of rulers, and statements of the dates of great battles, of the numbers killed and wounded on each side, and of the final result in victory and defeat for one side and the other. Because of the skilful manipulation of the figures by historians of different parties or nationalities, we are sometimes left sadly in the dark as to what the real facts were. Figures that "cannot lie" are often used by lying men, and the result is, to say the least, bewildering. But, as Mr. John Graham Brooks, among others, has pointed out, the great and all-important periods of peace and prosperity and progress have too often found no historian at all. Battles, which are mere ripples upon the surface, have been described over and over again with scrupulous care, while the great surging tides of thought and desire that cause the surface movements of the waters, and carry the ripples

ignored. When history shall have been restudied and rewritten, both literature and sociology will have, in history so written, a storehouse of material which will be invaluable for their respective uses. Whether this new history shall be written by men who call themselves historians, or by men who call themselves sociologists, is of comparatively little importance. We want the results; let who will do the work.

Let us frankly recognize, then, that literature is not the only source of knowledge of society, though it is an important one. Let us emphatically assert that the opinions formed as a result of the study of this material need to be corrected by facts gained from philosophy and history, and many other departments of knowledge. It yet remains true that literature is one of the important documents to be studied by the person who wishes to know the social conditions or developments of any period. In some cases it furnishes perhaps the best means of knowing thoroughly the life and thought of an epoch. If we ask the reason of this, we find the answer, first, in the character of literature itself; secondly, in the work which literature actually accomplishes; and, thirdly, in the methods by which literature achieves its results. Of these the second is by far the most important. The analysis and dis

in the portrayal of social life will occupy the larger part of this study.

I

First as to the character of literature. Really effective art does not obviously strive after effect. The actor who plays to the pit may win howlings of applause, but he is not contributing to the exaltation of his art or the permanency of his own reputation. The painter who works for the medal and colors his canvas to please the whim of some influential member of the committee may gain the coveted bronze, but he sacrifices his artist instincts and ideals. What does it profit an artist to gain all the trinkets that were ever stamped into hideousness, if he loses the seer's vision and the artist's power to suggest and portray? The one who poses or who lowers, for any cause whatsoever, what to him. is the very highest standard of effort, by that act proves his lack of appreciation of what is highest and most enduring in his art. The real alone is permanent. As the perfect comes the partial is done away, and to leave any work less perfect than it is possible to make it is to render it to that degree transient and insufficient.

The first demand that sociology makes upon literature is that it shall be true to the highest