Page images
PDF
EPUB

Per

relic to the next. In literature and in art, much as we crave a philosophy, we have as yet no widely accepted hypothesis to base it on, and the temptation even for makers of outlines is still to name over authors and painters in the old chronicle fashion against which the true outlines help us to revolt. haps it may be said that Elie Faure has more of a philosophy of art, and that he therefore wrote a truer outline of it, than Sir William Orpen. Also that several critics now living have a more definite philosophy of literature than Mr. Drinkwater. But no distinction among these books should obscure the importance of them all, as first attempts in our day to bring into coherence fields of knowledge which because of their very richness threatened to get out of hand.

If these outlines are so many philosophies, is not our first question answered? Is the general reader not justified in thinking that his favorite Outline is different from a mere history? Well, perhaps; and perhaps the difference is only of degree. What if the appearance of this word in our titles should mark the fact that we understand, or begin to understand, what all history is a very realistic form of philosophy, a noble form of tragedy or romance? The historian, bent by methods so called scientific, may try to take the bright personalities out of his story, but he cannot prevent us from

putting our own personalities in; we read more for our own experience than for the adventures of men long dead. It is as if we sat at a play. And the historian wrote to give his own personality, his own philosophy, a career. The maker of outlines is only a frank historian, who knows what he and we really care for in his work, and who plays it up, unashamed. To say so much is not to blame historians, but rather to praise them for being, like other men but in a higher degree, poets and philosophers. Mr. Wells used to interpret life in his novels. No doubt the novels were somehow founded on human experience, on fact and reputable reports of fact. He afterward interpreted life in his History. The History is longer than the novels, but it also has, no less than they, a basis in fact. There have been a number of men who, as they thought, knew facts but did not know what they meant. Perhaps we do not know a fact until it yields a meaning to us. Mr. Wells and the other leading outliners are rich in meaning, which may be the same thing as rich in knowledge. If Mr. Wells's knowledge is mistaken, I shall not worry so much as once I should have done, for with time my own outline of history grows very simple and comforting. Man is an incorrigible poet; human nature survives our reforms and our improvement; the universe outlives our explanations.

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic]

life and work of Kathleen Norris

Twill soon appear under the title of

"Noon" her own version of her own very interesting career.

ND Charles Norris has just finished a novel, which A with "Brass," "Bread," and "Salt" may be another

Charlotte Fairchild

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
« PreviousContinue »