THE EDUCATIONAL POWER OF FICTION.
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the open ground of Fancy." It was to the old woman "who had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning ghosts, fairies, witches and enchanted towers," that Burns acknowledges his indebtedness. Such are the sources to which many of our greatest writers trace their inspiration.
A fondness for novels is by no means confined to the period of youth, though it is then that the greatest influence is exerted. Fiction is at all times a most valuable, nay, an indispensable ingredient of every department of literature whatever. Knowledge of history, language and science is a necessary factor in the problem of life. Yet it is no less a part of a liberal education to have an intimate acquaintance with this finer and nobler field of letters. Without it man becomes cold and cynical. A false idea has come over a certain class of persons who call themselves "practical" men. They would confine the education to "exact' knowledge. Happily, to carry out such a theory is an impossibility. They forget that the foundation upon which they would build is itself a very unstable one. Science, the nearest approach, is filled with speculation. What is an hypothesis but a convenient fiction for the explanation of otherwise inexplicable natural phenomena? It is notorious that some of the very canons of science are merely provisional in tenure, liable to such revision as the advance of knowledge may require, or still worse, to be consigned to the lumber shop of exploded theories. One of the corner-stones of chemistry is the atomic theory, yet it is nothing but a physical concept; and when the mathematician avers that a curve is composed of a succession of infinitesimal straight lines, he is aware that his averment cannot be supported by demonstration. The corpuscular theory of light, enunciated by Sir Isaac Newton, subserved the purpose of elucidating everything pertaining to optical phenomena. The theory is now discarded as untenable, and in lieu of it we have the undulatory theory, which is another stupendous assumption.
Law has its fictions, a notable example being the assumption that the husband and wife are one. The language of diplomacy is couched in terms which must be read between lines to ascertain its true intent. When we pursue our investigations into the department of religion, we discover the systems of every creed so interwoven with fiction, that no exponent of any of these systems has ever been able to draw the line of demarcation between the real and the typical.
The founder of Christianity saw fit to teach by parables, and probably these have made the most enduring impression upon the minds of his followers, just as the master mind which enunciated them no doubt intended. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress struck a chord in the world of thought, second not even to anything contained in Holy-writ; yet every scene, character and incident is a fabrication. Now if we inquire the reason of the wonderful power exerted by the fanciful, we shall find it in the essence of our mental constitution. The concrete, the visible, the palpable, is ever at hand, and when we turn from this we naturally seek for something that symbolizes a reality.
History is largely made up of legends, yet none the less we consider it "philosophy teaching by example."
History and romance, though often treating of the same incidents, have widely separated, though equally useful aims. That has for its province to tell of joy and sorrow, of success and failure; this to make those incidents felt by its magical touches of fancy. Shakespeare and Scott in their historical inventions have delineated the