art. What does this glorious Imogen do? Why (and we publicly thank Heaven for it), after the first paroxysms of weeping, which makes the blank verse sob, she bursts into a fit of thoroughly feminine and altogether charming jealousy. A perfect woman indeed, for she is imperfect! Imogen, however, it may be urged, is not a Patient Grizzel. Take, then, Desdemona, who is. That is to say, Desdemona represents the type in nature which Patient Grizzel misrepresents. Mark now the difference in treatment. Shakespeare knew that these gentle, affectionate, yielding, all-submissive and allsuffering dispositions are founded on weakness, and accordingly he gave Desdemona the defects of her qualities. He would have no perfection in his characters. Rather than face the anger of the man whom she so passionately loves, Desdemona will lie- -a slight lie, but one to which the ideal distortion of her would never be allowed to yield. Yet the weakness but makes Shakespeare's lady more credible, more piteous, perhaps even more lovable, because more human. And Shakespeare's knowledge is borne out by the experience of those best qualified to speak. Woman is not, as a Shakespearian maxim belied by Shakespearian practice asserts, "a dish for the gods and the devil dress her not. She is a dish for men, and if she be imperfect the devil has little to do with it. Indeed we are sorry that Shakespeare stooped to this kind of thing. He might have left it to inferior men.

From the later developments of contemporary fiction the faultless hero and heroine have, we admit, relievingly disappeared. So much good has been wrought by the craze for "human documents." But alas! the disease expelled, who will expel the medicine? And the hydra perfection merely shoots up a new head. It is now a desire for the perfect reproduction of Nature, uninterfered with by the writer's ideals or sympathies; so that we have novelists who stand coldly aloof from their characters, and exhibit them with passionless countenance.1 We all admire the representations whịch result: "How beautifully drawn! How exactly like Nature!" Yes, beautifully drawn; but they do not live. They resemble the mask in "Phaedrus"-a cunning semblance, at animam non habet. The attitude of the novelist is fatal to artistic illusion: his personages do not move us because they do not move

him. Partridge believed in the ghost because "the little man on the stage was more frightened than I'; and in novelreading we are all Partridges, we only believe in the novelist's creations when he shows us that he believes in them himself. Finally, this pestilence attacks in literature the form no less than the essence, the integuments even more than the vitals. Hence arises the dominant belief that mannerism is vicious; and accordingly critics have erected the ideal of a style stripped of everything special or peculiar, a style which should be to thought what light is to the sun. Now this pure white light of style is as impossible as undesirable; it must be splintered into colour by the refracting media of the individual mind, and humanity will always prefer the colour. Theoretically we ought to have no mannerisms; practically we cannot help having them, and without them style would be flavourless "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." No man will drink distilled water; it is entirely pure and entirely insipid. The object of writing is to communicate individuality, the object of style to adequately embody that individuality; and since in every individuality worth anything there are characteristic peculiarities, these must needs be reproduced in the embodiment. So reproduced we call them mannerisms. They correspond to those little unconscious tricks of voice, manner, gesture in a friend which are to us the friend himself, and which we would not forgo. Conscious tricks of habit, it is true, a person must avoid, because they become exaggerations; similarly, conscious mannerisms must be pruned, lest they become exaggerations. It is affected to imitate another's tricks of demeanour: similarly, it is affected to imitate another's mannerisms. We should avoid as far as possible in conversation passing conventionalities of speech, because they are brainless; similarly, we should avoid as far as possible in writing the mannerisms of our age, because they corrupt originality. But in essence, mannerisms-individual mannerisms, are a season of style, and happily unavoidable. It is, for instance, stated in the lately completed Encyclopaedia Britannica that De Quincey is not a manneristic writer; and so put the assertion has much

1We will not shield ourselves under generalities. We refer especially to Mr. Henry James.

truth. Yet he is full of mannerisms, mannerisms which every student lovingly knows, and without which the essayist would not be our very own De Quincey.

We say, therefore: Be on your guard against this seductive principle of perfection. Order yourselves to a wise conformity with that Nature who cannot for the life of her create a brain without making one half of it weaker than the other half, or even a fool without a flaw in his folly; who cannot set a nose straight on a man's face, and whose geometrical drawing would be tittered at by half the young ladies of South Kensington. Consider who is the standing modern oracle of perfection, and what resulted from his interpretation of it. "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." No; it is half a pound of muscle to the square inchand that is no trifle. One satisfactory reflection we have in concluding. Wherever else the reader may be grieved by perfection, this article, at least, is sacred from the accursed thing. Now, how much of all this do we mean?

Hearken, O reader, to an apologue. Once on a time there was a hypochondriac, who-though his digestion was excellent-believed that his delicate system required a most winnowed choice of viands. His physician, in order to humour him, prescribed a light and carefully varied diet. But the hypochondriac was not satisfied.

"I want to know, doctor," he said, "how much of this food really contributes to the building up of my system, and how much is waste material?”

"That, "observed the sage physician, "I cannot possibly tell you without recondite analysis and nice calculation."

"Then," said the hypochondriac, in a rage, "I will not eat your food. You are an impostor, sir, and a charlatan, and I believe now your friends who told me that you were a homoeopath in disguise.'

"My dear sir," replied the unmoved physician, "if you will eat nothing but what is entire nutriment, you will soon need to consult, not a doctor, but a chameleon. To what purpose are your digestive organs, unless to secrete what is nutritious, and excrete what is innutritious?"

And the moral is-no. On second thoughts our readers shall have a pleasure denied to them in their outraged child

hood. They shall draw the moral themselves. He that hath understanding, let him understand.

THE LABORATORY METHOD IN MORALS 1

S. M. Crothers

SOCRATES has so long been received in good society that it is hard to do justice to the Athenians of his day who looked upon him as a dangerous character. We forget the verdict against him that he was a corrupter of youth. Had he confined his conversation to his coevals, and sat down with elderly gentlemen to discuss the nature of virtue, no objection could have been made because no harm could be done to their well-seasoned intelligence.

But Socrates sought out young men and put questions to them. And then he didn't furnish them with any ready-made answers, but incited them to ask more questions. Moreover, they were questions of the most practical kind which had to do with conduct. Soon everything was unsettled. Young Athens, instead of listening gravely to its elders, was asking, Why? The guardians of order were alarmed. Surely there were some things that ought to be taken for granted-at least by the young. Socrates should be given a dose of hemlock, then Youth would be safe.

It will not do to say that this was a false alarm, and that Socrates was really a safe person. There was a reason for the anxiety that was felt in regard to him. Some of his pupils turned out badly and made no end of trouble for the State. Respectable people couldn't forget Alcibiades.

It is all very well to say that we should test everything, and accept nothing that we do not find to be reasonable. But what if the thing to be hazarded in the test is your own life? If you make a fatal mistake, other people may learn a lesson from it, but you cannot. Here is a substance which excites your curiosity. It is labeled poison. But is it? How shall

From The Cheerful Giver. Copyright, S. M. Crothers. Houghton Mifflin and Company, Reprinted by permission.

you find out? Taste it and see. Yes, but if you taste it and it is poison, you can't see.

It is the shortness of life, the inexorableness of the consequences of mistake, that make the experimental method seem inapplicable in the realm of morals. To learn by our own blunders, implies that time will be given us for another trial. But the cruel fact is that opportunities come to us that are never repeated. Following a sudden impulse, it is possible for the youth to do an act which determines his whole life, and from whose consequences he can never escape, however bitterly he may repent.

Moreover, the moral questions propounded by Socrates were, after all, much simpler than those which confront the inquiring youth of to-day. It was more possible for the unassisted mind to grapple with the problems presented. The scope of inquiry was more restricted. If one went astray, he was not likely to get so completely bewildered as in the intricacies of modern thinking.

The youth of to-day finds himself a part of a highly organized social order. The customs he is asked to obey have been the results of many causes, through long periods of evolution. Some of them are doubtless only the survivals of primitive taboos; others are the result of costly experience. They represent laws which cannot be transgressed with impunity. He is confronted with many a stern "Thou Shalt Not." What does the prohibition mean? Perhaps there is an excellent reason. "There is a way that seemeth good to a man, but the end thereof is death.' But on the other hand there are ways that seem dangerous to timid souls which are only the ways of the expanding life. Shall he decline the adventure? To know the world one must not think to escape all perils.

Before one turns away from the experimental method in morals, he should take a lesson from those who have carried it farthest, and make it yield its finest fruits. It is by the methods approved by physical science that moral science may be improved.

We speak of the laboratory method as that of ceaseless experimentation. It is that, but it is something more. It is experiment made with due regard to the personal safety of the