A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing
is inadequate.
Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike
Achilles. "Plot is by no means character." Strictly speaking, it is
not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being
character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action,
and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever
conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of
looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction
_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than
anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that "we care
what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are."
I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not
know what happens to them.
THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE
IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals
some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that
The poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
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