SOURCE: "The Evolution of the Novel," in The Evolution of the English Novel, in The Macmillan Company, 1902, pp. 1-42.

In the following excerpt, first published in 1900 and reprinted in 1902, Stoddard proposes a law of development that he believes is applicable to any literary form: "the depiction of the external, objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of expression of which we can have records, the consideration of the internal, the subjective, the spiritual."

I do not undertake to show that the novel has grown out of any preceding form of literature with such preciseness that the traces of its growth can be shown. It is extremely doubtful if we can yet work out a perfect statement of the development of the novel out of any other form of literature; it is doubtful if we can work out any chronological sequence even within the period—the one hundred and fifty...