A work of art attains its goal when the artist's conception becomes our conception, when we sympathize. If his object be at all to make us believe with him, still he seeks this incidentally to making us see and feel with him. This appeal primarily to emotion is more largely characteristic of the other arts, perhaps, than of literature, and is most direct in music; but it is also characteristic of literature. The primary aim, and therefore the method, of Macbeth, of The Vicar of Wakefield, of Pilgrim's Progress, widely different as these pieces of literature are, is in various degrees emotional; and the methods toward emotional realization, of whatever degree, are methods, not of explanation, but of suggestion.

146. Another aspect of the same distinction appears when we observe that the mode of logical composition is abstract; of literary composition, concrete. Character, emotion, scenery, in a work of art are not summed up after analysis; they are communicated somewhat as they are communicated in actual experience, by look, gesture, colour, action, by what appeals to the intellect indirectly through the senses, in a word, by the concrete (§ 226). Exposition sums up experience in the abstract, puts it into a formula; narration or description selects from experience the light, sound, colour, gesture, the physical details from which experience received suggestions and which may be suggestive to the experience of others, puts experience into a parable. Both methods may be found in a single literary form, of course most commonly in the essay; but none the less for that the typically literary method differs thus from the typically logical method. The Book of Job is

a poem of the soul made perfect through suffering; much the same idea is summed up abstractly in Bacon's

essay on adversity (§ 6). Logical composition, then, states in the abstract; artistic composition suggests in

the concrete.

I. UNITY

a. as arising from personal selection

147. From this essential difference, as between propounding or explaining experience and narrating or describing experience, ensues a different view of the cardinal principles, unity, emphasis, and coherence. These are principles of logic, but not exclusively. In artistic composition unity is regulated by logical relevancy but secondarily. Primarily the unity of artistic composition, whatever the art, is regulated by such selection of a few details as makes further detail and all explanation superfluous. Thus in narration unity means primarily the selection of such details as induce the intended mood and lead to the climax. The selection of these implies the omission of others; for art is a simplification of life, arbitrary because it is personal. Art is not so much a transcript of experience as a coloured interpretation. Its truth is measured not so much by its literal accuracy, its faithfulness to the rules of evidence, as by its faithfulness to the impression of the writer, the colouring of his own vision. This that I saw myself, he seems to say, had this meaning to me. In a word, artistic unity is unity of conception. True, in literature the matter, the subject, must always be of relatively greater importance than in painting. In painting-sheep, fields, the human face, what difference? We care only for the painter's expression. In literature we care relatively more for subject-matter; but even in

literature the measure is personal interpretation. Without some interpretation there is no artistic unity, indeed no art; and interpretation necessitates, consciously or unconsciously, the selection of this, the omission of that.

For selection is at once the limitation and the method of all art. The painter reduces a landscape to a few colours laid upon a square of canvas. For being ten times that size his picture would not be the nearer to rendering complete account of the infinite detail of nature. So the narrator, whether of fact or of fiction, can make no approach to complete rendering of that complicated succession of details, external and internal, which makes up a human life. Thus to render one day would demand the length of a novel. A painstaking biography is often far smaller than the bulk of the mere correspondence from which it is drawn; and a man's correspondence fills but a small part of his days. Mere physical necessity, then, demands selection. But even if the artist could present the detail of nature, he would not. That is not his way. To say that he is an artist is to say that he has the impulse to express his own view of life, his interpretation, his own personality. And the value of his work to us is measured but secondarily by the number and accuracy of its facts; that is the measure of science: it is measured primarily by the truth and beauty with which facts are interpreted by him; that is the measure of art. Art does not try to compete with the impressions of life, nor even to record them, such record being the business of laboratories for research in psychology, but to interpret them through the simplifying medium of personal selection.

b. as producing singleness of impression

148. The unity of literary composition, then, appearing in the essential artistic method of selection, is a unity not illogical, indeed, but not determined by logic. It is a unity of impression. The writer keeps us in a mood, leads us to a dominant emotion, makes the whole open a single vision. Unity in this sense often eludes formulation. Macbeth has unity. Will any one venture to sum up Macbeth in a sentence? The unity is felt, and, being felt, needs no statement. The Ancient Mariner seems to be summed up in :

"He prayeth best who loveth best-"

but reflection finds this stanza summary of the message, or moral, of the poem, not of its whole meaning. So The Fall of the House of Usher is a very subtle harmonization of the single theme of fear. But that word fear, or any nicer synonym, is quite inadequate to express the constant dominance of a single, strong impression. Whether formulation, then, is helpful or not, whether or not it is even possible, a work of art is unified only when the unity is felt.

II. COHERENCE

149. The principle of coherence again, though the statements of it at §§ 7, 17, 75, hold for both kinds, means in artistic composition more than logical progress. The progress of the Sentimental Journey, indeed, is even illogical; but, logical or not, the coherence of artistic composition must be something more. When the hero leaves the room he may be made to go anywhere. A ship leaving the wharf of a description

might be bound for the Indies or the Pole. But it must not seem so to the reader. To him the destination of everything must seem inevitable from what went before. This is the effect of artistic gradation, part so laid to part that the progress may seem inevitable, spontaneous because the connection seems almost organic.

150. Of artistic coherence most that is not detail (§ 192) may be summed up in the word movement. The arrangement and the transitions must be such that the composition may seem to move always, to move naturally, and to move without being from time to time wound up. In a word, artistic coherence is movement without interruption. The fine workman is known by his transitions; and where else are we so sure to detect the 'prentice hand? Explanatory interpolations ("where we arrived," "presents an appearance," "due to the discouragement of fatigue," see § 195) are not always pared off by the mere process of selection; and further, the information that remains necessary to clearness and yet is not really part of the action or scene to be suggested, must be provided without obvious intrusion (§§ 170-172). Thus the antecedent action of a story or drama is made to transpire through the action proper and the dialogue while both at the same time are moving on. Thus the necessary information in description is insinuated in subordinate clauses and suggested by the implication of the descriptive words. To describe as follows is distinctly inartistic:

I took an electric car from the green. When we reached the end of the line at Burgess Street I saw on the left a high bank of red clay. There were few trees anywhere except a grove of dark green pines at the top of this bank. Several street boys, having left their clothes under the trees, ran