but observe the course of nature as it may chance to arise, and describe it in its succession.  They bid us be all eye, no mind; all sense, no thought; all chance, all confusion, no order, no organization, no fabric of the reason.  But there are no such realists; though pure realism has its place, as will hereafter be shown, it is usually found mixed with ideal method; and as commonly employed the word designates the preference merely for types and plots of much detail, of narrow application, of little meaning, in opposition to the highly generalized and significant types and plots usually associated with the term idealism.  In what way such realism has its place will also appear at a later stage.  Here it is necessary to say no more than that in proportion as realism uses the ideal method only at the lowest, it narrows its appeal, weakens its power, and takes from literature her highest distinction by virtue of which she grasps the whole of character and fate in her creation and informs man of the secrets of his human heart, the course of his mortal destiny, and the end of all his spiritual effort and aspiration.

I am aware that I have not proceeded so far without starting objections.  To meet that which is most grave, what shall I say when it is alleged that there is no order such as I have assumed in life; or, if there be, that it is insufficiently known, too intangible and complex, too various in different races and ages, to be made the subject of such an exposition as obtains of natural order?  Were this assertion true, yet there would be good reason to retain our illusion; for the mind delights in order, and will invent it.  The mind is perplexed and disturbed until it finds this order; and in the progressive integration of its experience into an ordered world lies its work.  Art gives pleasure to the intellect, because in its structure whatever is superfluous and extrinsic has been eliminated, so that the mind contemplates an artistic work as a unity of relations bound each to each which it fully comprehends.  Such works, we say, have form, which is just this interdependence of parts wholly understood which appeals to the intellect, and satisfies it:  they would please the mind, though the order they embody were purely imaginary, just as science would delight it, were the order of nature itself illusory.  Creative art would thus still have a ground of being under a sceptical philosophy; man would delight to dream his dream.  But it is not necessary to take this lower line of argument.

It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and universal as in the material world.  The soul of man has a common being in all.  There could be no science of logic, psychology, or metaphysics on the hypothesis of any uncertainty as to the identity of mind in all, nor any science of ethics on the hypothesis of any variation as to the identity of the will in all, nor any ground of