THE NOVEL AND THE COMMON SCHOOL

By Charles Dudley Warner

There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of thepeople of the United States within two generations. This is morenoticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere; andthe foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which heattributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety, which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, findsvery little now to sustain his theory. Although the restless energycontinues, the mixed race in America has certainly changed physically forthe better. Speaking generally, the contours of face and form are morerounded. The change is most marked in regions once noted for leanness, angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country thetypes of physical manhood are more numerous; and if women of rare andexceptional beauty are not more numerous, no doubt the average ofcomeliness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increase of beautydue to better development has not been at the expense of delicacy ofcomplexion and of line, as it has been in some European countries. Physical well-being is almost entirely a matter of nutrition. Somethingis due in our case to the accumulation of money, to the decrease in anincreasing number of our population of the daily anxiety about food andclothes, to more leisure; but abundant and better-prepared food is thedirect agency in our physical change. Good food is not only more abundantand more widely distributed than it was two generations ago, but it is tobe had in immeasurably greater variety. No other people existing, or thatever did exist, could command such a variety of edible products for dailyconsumption as the mass of the American people habitually use today. Inconsequence they have the opportunity of being better nourished than anyother people ever were. If they are not better nourished, it is becausetheir food is badly prepared. Whenever we find, either in New England orin the South, a community ill-favored, dyspeptic, lean, and faded incomplexion, we may be perfectly sure that its cooking is bad, and that itis too ignorant of the laws of health to procure that variety of foodwhich is so easily obtainable. People who still diet on sodden pie andthe products of the frying-pan of the pioneer, and then, in order topromote digestion, attempt to imitate the patient cow by masticating someelastic and fragrant gum, are doing very little to bring in thatuniversal physical health or beauty which is the natural heritage of ouropportunity. 

Now, what is the relation of our intellectual development to thisphysical improvement? It will be said that the general intelligence israised, that the habit of reading is much more widespread, and that theincrease of books, periodicals, and newspapers shows a greater mentalactivity than existed formerly. It will also be said that the opportunityfor education was never before so nearly universal. If it is not yet trueeverywhere that all children must go to school, it is true that all maygo to school free of cost. Without doubt, also, great advance has beenmade in American scholarship, in specialized learning and investigation;that is to say, the proportion of scholars of the first rank inliterature and in science is much larger to the population than ageneration ago. 

But what is the relation of our general intellectual life to populareducation? Or, in other words, what effect is popular education havingupon the general intellectual habit and taste? There are two ways oftesting this. One is by observing whether the mass of minds is bettertrained and disciplined than formerly, less liable to delusions, betterable to detect fallacies, more logical, and less likely to be led away bynovelties in speculation, or by theories that are unsupported by historicevidence or that are contradicted by a knowledge of human nature. If wewere tempted to pursue this test, we should be forced to note the seeminganomaly of a scientific age peculiarly credulous; the ease with which anycharlatan finds followers; the common readiness to fall in with anytheory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept thewildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to notealso, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come toconclusions on inadequate evidence--a disposition usually due toone-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the philosophichabit. Multitudes of fairly intelligent people are afloat without anybase-line of thought to which they can refer new suggestions; just asmany politicians are floundering about for want of an apprehension of theConstitution of the United States and of the historic development ofsociety. An honest acceptance of the law of gravitation would banish manypopular delusions; a comprehension that something cannot be made out ofnothing would dispose of others; and the application of the ordinaryprinciples of evidence, such as men require to establish a title toproperty, would end most of the remaining. How far is our populareducation, which we have now enjoyed for two full generations, responsible for this state of mind? If it has not encouraged it, has itdone much to correct it?

The other test of popular education is in the kind of reading sought andenjoyed by the majority of the American people. As the greater part ofthis reading is admitted to be fiction, we have before us the relation ofthe novel to the common school. As the common school is our universalmethod of education, and the novels most in demand are those least worthyto be read, we may consider this subject in two aspects: theencouragement, by neglect or by teaching, of the taste that demands thiskind of fiction, and the tendency of the novel to become what this tastedemands. 

Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice aphenomenon in letters--namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as avehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news, oreven with creating news and increasing its sensational character, itgrasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the million, usurping the place of books and to a large extent of periodicals. Theeffect of this new departure in journalism is beginning to attractattention. An increasing number of people read nothing except thenewspapers. Consequently, they get little except scraps and bits; nosubject is considered thoroughly or exhaustively; and they are furnishedwith not much more than the small change for superficial conversation. The habit of excessive newspaper reading, in which a great variety oftopics is inadequately treated, has a curious effect on the mind. Itbecomes demoralized, gradually loses the power of concentration or ofcontinuous thought, and even loses the inclination to read the longarticles which the newspaper prints. The eye catches a thousand things, but is detained by no one. Variety, which in limitations is wholesome inliterary as well as in physical diet, creates dyspepsia when it isexcessive, and when the literary viands are badly cooked and badly servedthe evil is increased. The mind loses the power of discrimination, thetaste is lowered, and the appetite becomes diseased. The effect of thisscrappy, desultory reading is bad enough when the hashed compoundselected is tolerably good. It becomes a very serious matter when thereading itself is vapid, frivolous, or bad. The responsibility ofselecting the mental food for millions of people is serious. When, in thelast century, in England, the Society for the Diffusion of UsefulInformation, which accomplished so much good, was organized, thisresponsibility was felt, and competent hands prepared the popular booksand pamphlets that were cheap in price and widely diffused. Now, ithappens that a hundred thousand people, perhaps a million in some cases, surrender the right of the all-important selection of the food for theirminds to some unknown and irresponsible person whose business it is tochoose the miscellaneous reading-matter for a particular newspaper. Hisor her taste may be good, or it may be immature and vicious; it may beused simply to create a sensation; and yet the million of readers getnothing except what this one person chooses they shall read. It is anastonishing abdication of individual preference. Day after day, Sundayafter Sunday, they read only what this unknown person selects for them. Instead of going to the library and cultivating their own tastes, andpursuing some subject that will increase their mental vigor and add totheir permanent stock of thought, they fritter away their time upon ahash of literature chopped up for them by a person possibly very unfiteven to make good hash. The mere statement of this surrender of one'sjudgment of what shall be his intellectual life is alarming. 

But the modern newspaper is no doubt a natural evolution in our sociallife. As everything has a cause, it would be worth while to inquirewhether the encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a demand, to ataste created by our common schools. Or, to put the question in anotherform, does the system of education in our common schools give the pupilsa taste for good literature or much power of discrimination? Do they comeout of school with the habit of continuous reading, of reading books, oronly of picking up scraps in the newspapers, as they might snatch a hastymeal at a lunch-counter? What, in short, do the schools contribute to thecreation of a taste for good literature?

Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about the modern novel. It isfeared that it will not be realistic enough, that it will be toorealistic, that it will be insincere as to the common aspects of life, that it will not sufficiently idealize life to keep itself within thelimits of true art. But while the critics are busy saying what the novelshould be, and attacking or defending the fiction of the previous age, the novel obeys pretty well the laws of its era, and in many ways, especially in the variety of its development, represents the time. Regarded simply as a work of art, it may be said that the novel should bean expression of the genius of its writer conscientiously applied to astudy of the facts of life and of human nature, with little reference tothe audience. Perhaps the great works of art that have endured have beenso composed. We may say, for example, that "Don Quixote" had to createits sympathetic audience. But, on the other hand, works of art worthy thename are sometimes produced to suit a demand and to please a tastealready created. A great deal of what passes for literature in these daysis in this category of supply to suit the demand, and perhaps it can besaid of this generation more fitly than of any other that the novel seeksto hit the popular taste; having become a means of livelihood, it mustsell in order to be profitable to the producer, and in order to sell itmust be what the reading public want. The demand and sale are widelytaken as the criterion of excellence, or they are at least sufficientencouragement of further work on the line of the success. This criterionis accepted by the publisher, whose business it is to supply a demand. The conscientious publisher asks two questions: Is the book good? andWill it sell? The publisher without a conscience asks only one question:Will the book sell? The reflex influence of this upon authors isimmediately felt. 

The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for anypurpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thusencouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels hasbecome a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of thesilk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment onindividual looms at home; but if demand for the sort of goods furnishedat present continues, there is no reason why they should not be produced, even more cheaply than they are now, in great factories, where there canbe division of labor and economy of talent. The shoal of English novelsconscientiously reviewed every seventh day in the London weeklies wouldpreserve their present character and gain in firmness of texture if theywere made by machinery. One has only to mark what sort of novels reachthe largest sale and are most called for in the circulating libraries, togauge pretty accurately the public taste, and to measure the influence ofthis taste upon modern production. With the exception of the novel nowand then which touches some religious problem or some socialisticspeculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, thenovels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move ina plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to beconsidered works of art. They represent the chromo stage of development. 

They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark ofthis age--nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering thetraining of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that itshould insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should requirequality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectualdevelopment that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on bythe rich as by the poor. The taste for a good book has not kept pace withthe taste for a good dinner, and multitudes who have commendable judgmentabout the table would think it a piece of extravagance to pay as much fora book as for a dinner, and would be ashamed to smoke a cigar that costless than a novel. Indeed, we seem to be as yet far away from theappreciation of the truth that what we put into the mind is as importantto our well-being as what we put into the stomach. 

No doubt there are more people capable of appreciating a good book, andthere are more good books read, in this age, than in any previous, thoughthe ratio of good judges to the number who read is less; but we areconsidering the vast mass of the reading public and its tastes. I say itstastes, and probably this is not unfair, although this traveling, restless, reading public meekly takes, as in the case of the readingselected in the newspapers, what is most persistently thrust upon itsattention by the great news agencies, which find it most profitable todeal in that which is cheap and ephemeral. The houses which publish booksof merit are at a disadvantage with the distributing agencies. 

Criticism which condemns the common-school system as a nurse ofsuperficiality, mediocrity, and conceit does not need serious attention, any more than does the criticism that the universal opportunity ofindividual welfare offered by a republic fails to make a perfectgovernment. But this is not saying that the common school does all thatit can do, and that its results answer to the theories about it. It mustbe partly due to the want of proper training in the public schools thatthere are so few readers of discrimination, and that the general taste, judged by the sort of books now read, is so mediocre. Most of the publicschools teach reading, or have taught it, so poorly that the scholars whocome from them cannot read easily; hence they must have spice, and blood, and vice to stimulate them, just as a man who has lost taste peppers hisfood. We need not agree with those who say that there is no meritwhatever in the mere ability to read; nor, on the other hand, can we jointhose who say that the art of reading will pretty surely encourage ataste for the nobler kind of reading, and that the habit of reading trashwill by-and-by lead the reader to better things. As a matter ofexperience, the reader of the namby-pamby does not acquire an appetitefor anything more virile, and the reader of the sensational requiresconstantly more highly flavored viands. Nor is it reasonable to expectgood taste to be recovered by an indulgence in bad taste. 

What, then, does the common school usually do for literary taste?Generally there is no thought about it. It is not in the minds of themajority of teachers, even if they possess it themselves. The business isto teach the pupils to read; how they shall use the art of reading islittle considered. If we examine the reading-books from the lowest gradeto the highest, we shall find that their object is to teach words, notliterature. The lower-grade books are commonly inane (I will not saychildish, for that is a libel on the open minds of children) beyonddescription. There is an impression that advanced readers have improvedmuch in quality within a few years, and doubtless some of them do containspecimens of better literature than their predecessors. But they are onthe old plan, which must be radically modified or entirely cast aside, and doubtless will be when the new method is comprehended, and teachersare well enough furnished to cut loose from the machine. We may say thatto learn how to read, and not what to read, is confessedly the object ofthese books; but even this object is not attained. There is an endeavorto teach how to call the words of a reading-book, but not to teach how toread; for reading involves, certainly for the older scholars, thecombination of known words to form new ideas. This is lacking. The tastefor good literature is not developed; the habit of continuous pursuit ofa subject, with comprehension of its relations, is not acquired; and noconception is gained of the entirety of literature or its importance tohuman life. Consequently, there is no power of judgment or faculty ofdiscrimination. 

Now, this radical defect can be easily remedied if the school authoritiesonly clearly apprehend one truth, and that is that the minds of childrenof tender age can be as readily interested and permanently interested ingood literature as in the dreary feebleness of the juvenile reader. Themind of the ordinary child should not be judged by the mind that producesstuff of this sort: "Little Jimmy had a little white pig. " "Did thelittle pig know Jimmy?" "Yes, the little pig knew Jimmy, and would comewhen he called. " "How did little Jimmy know his pig from the other littlepigs?" "By the twist in his tail. " ("Children, " asks the teacher, "whatis the meaning of 'twist'?") "Jimmy liked to stride the little pig'sback. " "Would the little pig let him?" "Yes, when he was absorbed eatinghis dinner. " ("Children, what is the meaning of 'absorbed'?") And so on. 

This intellectual exercise is, perhaps, read to children who have not gotfar enough in "word-building" to read themselves about little Jimmy andhis absorbed pig. It may be continued, together with word-learning, untilthe children are able to say (is it reading?) the entire volume of thisprecious stuff. To what end? The children are only languidly interested;their minds are not awakened; the imagination is not appealed to; theyhave learned nothing, except probably some new words, which are learnedas signs. Often children have only one book even of this sort, at whichthey are kept until they learn it through by heart, and they have beenheard to "read" it with the book bottom side up or shut! All these bookscultivate inattention and intellectual vacancy. They are--the best ofthem--only reading exercises; and reading is not perceived to have anysort of value. The child is not taught to think, and not a step is takenin informing him of his relation to the world about him. His education isnot begun. 

Now it happens that children go on with this sort of reading and theordinary text-books through the grades of the district school into thehigh school, and come to the ages of seventeen and eighteen without theleast conception of literature, or of art, or of the continuity of therelations of history; are ignorant of the great names which illuminatethe ages; have never heard of Socrates, or of Phidias, or of Titian; donot know whether Franklin was an Englishman or an American; would bepuzzled to say whether it was Ben Franklin or Ben Jonson who inventedlightning--think it was Ben Somebody; cannot tell whether they livedbefore or after Christ, and indeed never have thought that anythinghappened before the time of Christ; do not know who was on the throne ofSpain when Columbus discovered America--and so on. These are not imaginedinstances. The children referred to are in good circumstances and havehad fairly intelligent associations, but their education has beenintrusted to the schools. They know nothing except their text-books, andthey know these simply for the purpose of examination. Such pupils cometo the age of eighteen with not only no taste for the best reading, forthe reading of books, but without the ability to be interested even infiction of the first class, because it is full of allusions that conveynothing to their minds. The stories they read, if they read at all--thenovels, so called, that they have been brought up on--are the diluted andfeeble fictions that flood the country, and that scarcely rise above theintellectual level of Jimmy and the absorbed pig. 

It has been demonstrated by experiment that it is as easy to begin withgood literature as with the sort of reading described. It makes littledifference where the beginning is made. Any good book, any real book, isan open door into the wide field of literature; that is to say, ofhistory--that is to say, of interest in the entire human race. Read tochildren of tender years, the same day, the story of Jimmy and a Greekmyth, or an episode from the "Odyssey, " or any genuine bit of humannature and life; and ask the children next day which they wish to hearagain. Almost all of them will call for the repetition of the real thing, the verity of which they recognize, and which has appealed to theirimaginations. But this is not all. If the subject is a Greek myth, theyspeedily come to comprehend its meaning, and by the aid of the teacher totrace its development elsewhere, to understand its historic significance, to have the mind filled with images of beauty, and wonder. Is it theHomeric story of Nausicaa? What a picture! How speedily Greek historyopens to the mind! How readily the children acquire knowledge of thegreat historic names, and see how their deeds and their thoughts arerelated to our deeds and our thoughts! It is as easy to know aboutSocrates as about Franklin and General Grant. Having the mind open toother times and to the significance of great men in history, how muchmore clearly they comprehend Franklin and Grant and Lincoln! Nor is thisall. The young mind is open to noble thoughts, to high conceptions; itfollows by association easily along the historic and literary line; andnot only do great names and fine pieces of literature become familiar, but the meaning of the continual life in the world begins to beapprehended. This is not at all a fancy sketch. The writer has seen thewhole assembly of pupils in a school of six hundred, of all the eightgrades, intelligently interested in a talk which contained classical andliterary allusions that would have been incomprehensible to an ordinaryschool brought up on the ordinary readers and text-books. 

But the reading need not be confined to the classics nor to themaster-pieces of literature. Natural history--generally the mostfascinating of subjects--can be taught; interest in flowers and trees andbirds and the habits of animals can be awakened by reading the essays ofliterary men on these topics as they never can be by the dry text-books. The point I wish to make is that real literature for the young, literature which is almost absolutely neglected in the public schools, except in a scrappy way as a reading exercise, is the best open door tothe development of the mind and to knowledge of all sorts. The unfoldingof a Greek myth leads directly to art, to love of beauty, to knowledge ofhistory, to an understanding of ourselves. But whatever the beginning is, whether a classic myth, a Homeric epic, a play of Sophocles, the story ofthe life and death of Socrates, a mediaeval legend, or any genuine pieceof literature from the time of Virgil down to our own, it may not so muchmatter (except that it is better to begin with the ancients in order togain a proper perspective) whatever the beginning is, it should be thebest literature. The best is not too good for the youngest child. Simplicity, which commonly characterizes greatness, is of courseessential. But never was a greater mistake made than in thinking that ayouthful mind needs watering with the slops ordinarily fed to it. Evenchildren in the kindergarten are eager for Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" andLongfellow's "Hiawatha. " It requires, I repeat, little more pains tocreate a good taste in reading than a bad taste. 

It would seem that in the complete organization of the public schools alleducation of the pupil is turned over to them as it was not formerly, andit is possible that in the stress of text-book education there is no timefor reading at home. The competent teachers contend not merely with thedifficulty of the lack of books and the deficiencies of those in use, butwith the more serious difficulty of the erroneous ideas of the functionof text-books. They will cease to be a commercial commodity of so muchvalue as now when teachers teach. If it is true that there is no time forreading at home, we can account for the deplorable lack of taste in thegreat mass of the reading public educated at the common schools; and wecan see exactly what the remedy should be--namely, the teaching of theliterature at the beginning of school life, and following it up broadlyand intelligently during the whole school period. It will not crowd outanything else, because it underlies everything. After many years ofperversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in acomprehensive text-book, as if it were to be learned--like arithmetic, isa ludicrous proceeding. This, is not teaching literature nor giving thescholar a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing the mind with namesand dates, which are not seen to have any relation to present life, andwhich speedily fade out of the mind. The love of literature is not to beattained in this way, nor in any way except by reading the bestliterature. 

The notion that literature can be taken up as a branch of education, andlearned at the proper time and when studies permit, is one of the mostfarcical in our scheme of education. It is only matched in absurdity bythe other current idea, that literature is something separate and apartfrom general knowledge. Here is the whole body of accumulated thought andexperience of all the ages, which indeed forms our present life andexplains it, existing partly in tradition and training, but more largelyin books; and most teachers think, and most pupils are led to believe, that this most important former of the mind, maker of character, andguide to action can be acquired in a certain number of lessons out of atextbook! Because this is so, young men and young women come up tocollege almost absolutely ignorant of the history of their race and ofthe ideas that have made our civilization. Some of them have never read abook, except the text-books on the specialties in which they haveprepared themselves for examination. We have a saying concerning peoplewhose minds appear to be made up of dry, isolated facts, that they haveno atmosphere. Well, literature is the atmosphere. In it we live, andmove, and have our being, intellectually. The first lesson read to, orread by, the child should begin to put him in relation with the world andthe thought of the world. This cannot be done except by the livingteacher. No text-book, no one reading-book or series of reading-books, will do it. If the teacher is only the text-book orally delivered, theteacher is an uninspired machine. We must revise our notions of thefunction of the teacher for the beginners. The teacher is to presentevidence of truth, beauty, art. Where will he or she find it? Why, inexperimental science, if you please, in history, but, in short, in goodliterature, using the word in its broadest sense. The object in selectingreading for children is to make it impossible for them to see anyevidence except the best. That is the teacher's business, and how fewunderstand their business! How few are educated! In the best literaturewe find truth about the world, about human nature; and hence, if childrenread that, they read what their experience will verify. I am told thatpublishers are largely at fault for the quality of the reading used inschools--that schools would gladly receive the good literature if theycould get it. But I do not know, in this case, how much the demand has todo with the supply. I am certain, however, that educated teachers woulduse only the best means for forming the minds and enlightening theunderstanding of their pupils. It must be kept in mind that reading, silent reading done by the scholar, is not learning signs and callingwords; it is getting thought. If children are to get thought, they shouldbe served with the best--that which will not only be true, but appeal sonaturally to their minds that they will prefer it to all meaner stuff. Ifit is true that children cannot acquire this taste at home--and it istrue for the vast majority of American children--then it must be given inthe public schools. To give it is not to interrupt the acquisition ofother knowledge; it is literally to open the door to all knowledge. 

When this truth is recognized in the common schools, and literature isgiven its proper place, not only for the development of the mind, but asthe most easily-opened door to history, art, science, generalintelligence, we shall see the taste of the reading public in the UnitedStates undergo a mighty change: It will not care for the fiction it likesat present, and which does little more than enfeeble its powers; and thenthere can be no doubt that fiction will rise to supply the demand forsomething better. When the trash does not sell, the trash will not beproduced, and those who are only capable of supplying the present demandwill perhaps find a more useful occupation. It will be again evident thatliterature is not a trade, but an art requiring peculiar powers andpatient training. When people know how to read, authors will need to knowhow to write. 

In all other pursuits we carefully study the relation of supply todemand. Why not in literature? Formerly, when readers were comparativelyfew, and were of a class that had leisure and the opportunity ofcultivating the taste, books were generally written for this class, andaimed at its real or supposed capacities. If the age was coarse in speechor specially affected in manner, the books followed the lead given by thedemand; but, coarse or affected, they had the quality of art demanded bythe best existing cultivation. Naturally, when the art of reading isacquired by the great mass of the people, whose taste has not beencultivated, the supply for this increased demand will, more or less, follow the level of its intelligence. After our civil war there was apatriotic desire to commemorate the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers inmonuments, and the deeds of our great captains in statues. This nobledesire was not usually accompanied by artistic discrimination, and theland is filled with monuments and statues which express the gratitude ofthe people. The coming age may wish to replace them by images andstructures which will express gratitude and patriotism in a higherbecause more artistic form. In the matter of art the development isdistinctly reflex. The exhibition of works of genius will slowly instructand elevate the popular taste, and in time the cultivated popular tastewill reject mediocrity and demand better things. Only a little while agofew people in the United States knew how to draw, and only a few couldtell good drawing from bad. To realize the change that has taken place, we have only to recall the illustrations in books, magazines, and comicnewspapers of less than a quarter of a century ago. Foreign travel, foreign study, and the importation of works of art (still blindlyrestricted by the American Congress) were the lessons that began to worka change. Now, in all our large towns, and even in hundreds of villages, there are well-established art schools; in the greater cities, unions andassociations, under the guidance of skillful artists, where five or sixhundred young men and women are diligently, day and night, learning therudiments of art. The result is already apparent. Excellent drawing isseen in illustrations for books and magazines, in the satirical and comicpublications, even in the advertisements and theatrical posters. At ourpresent rate of progress, the drawings in all our amusing weeklies willsoon be as good as those in the 'Fliegende Blatter. ' The change ismarvelous; and the popular taste has so improved that it would not beprofitable to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations of twenty years ago. But as to fiction, even if the writers of it were all trained in it as anart, it is not so easy to lift the public taste to their artistic level. The best supply in this case will only very slowly affect the quality ofthe demand. When the poor novel sells vastly better than the good novel, the poor will be produced to supply the demand, the general taste will bestill further lowered, and the power of discrimination fade out more andmore. What is true of the novel is true of all other literature. Tastefor it must be cultivated in childhood. The common schools must do forliterature what the art schools are doing for art. Not every one canbecome an artist, not every one can become a writer--though this iscontrary to general opinion; but knowledge to distinguish good drawingfrom bad can be acquired by most people, and there are probably few mindsthat cannot, by right methods applied early, be led to prefer goodliterature, and to have an enjoyment in it in proportion to itssincerity, naturalness, verity, and truth to life. 

It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the American novel needs for itsdevelopment is an audience, but it is safe to say that an audience wouldgreatly assist it. Evidence is on all sides of a fresh, new, wonderfulartistic development in America in drawing, painting, sculpture, ininstrumental music and singing, and in literature. The promise of this isnot only in the climate, the free republican opportunity, the mixed racesblending the traditions and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but it isin a certain temperament which we already recognize as American. It is anartistic tendency. This was first most noticeable in American women, towhom the art of dress seemed to come by nature, and the art of beingagreeable to be easily acquired. 

Already writers have arisen who illustrate this artistic tendency innovels, and especially in short stories. They have not appeared to owetheir origin to any special literary centre; they have come forward inthe South, the West, the East. Their writings have to a great degree(considering our pupilage to the literature of Great Britain, which isprolonged by the lack of an international copyright) the stamp oforiginality, of naturalness, of sincerity, of an attempt to give thefacts of life with a sense of their artistic value. Their affiliation israther with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than withthe modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market withthe uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especiallybad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it isprinted on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owingto a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools, their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior, mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of themagazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could earnas much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all ofwhom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must beconfessed that their audience is small. 

This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, andthe common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general readingpublic, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in thecommon school is the same--the lack of inspiration and ideality. Thecommon school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general publiclacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either producedby or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to thedemand of the times. 

It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in theschools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set asidein the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance. Theteacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken eagernessto know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the Hindoo or theGreek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend, of the heroicepic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any genuine pieceof literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge of it as we mayknow the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas of a science, but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the life anddevelopment of the race, to a study of the motives of human action, to acomprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply enriched, butbecomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of events andopinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with literature can aloneperform. So that, in school, literature is not only, as I have said, theeasiest open door to all else desirable, the best literature is not onlythe best means of awakening the young mind, the stimulus most congenial, but it is the best foundation for broad and generous culture. Indeed, without its co-ordinating influence the education of the common school isa thing of shreds and patches. Besides, the mind aroused to historicconsciousness, kindled in itself by the best that has been said and donein all ages, is more apt in the pursuit, intelligently, of any specialty;so that the shortest road to the practical education so much insisted onin these days begins in the awakening of the faculties in the mannerdescribed. There is no doubt of the value of manual training as an aid ingiving definiteness, directness, exactness to the mind, but meretechnical training alone will be barren of those results, in generaldiscriminating culture, which we hope to see in America. 

The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not, however, automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift thenation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can easily be madeto inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influencein teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened, elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art, of American fiction. 

It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that anelevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of agenuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens theconveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator. Abook which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to thehighest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; whichfurnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels thecares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friendsfail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for ayear, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has aproper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author. (1890. )