Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Have we two brains or one?. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
18/18
![THE/ future of fiction. It might well s/eem a foolhardy venture to attemfit to foie- cast the future off fiction. Efcw, it maJ be asked, hre we to gauge the artistic Value and thd possibilities of growthjof so volu- minous and chaotic a material/ as the contemporary ndvel? It is questioned by soilie whether prose fictiofi has any rightful place in the world of /art, and miny who wtould hardly go so far as this in the path of skeptical doubt maintain that the larger part of recent fiction is of/no real aril permanent worth. On the other hand, there seefn to be borne happilF-constituted persons who dfecern in thf abundancfe of recent li|erary output a proof of the prodigality (if Nature, fho has somehow managed in these latte/ days to p/oduce something like a plethora of literary geniuj In view oil such a perplexing statj of things, al hope to do in]the way of Conjectural forecast is to sfeek for indica- tions of the /future destiny of the nbvel in a clearer conception of its origin /and essential art function. If we c m manage to throw a ray if light on t/lie origin aid raison Ue/rc of the novel, we shall be/ as advantageously placed as it seems possible to be for answering the questipn whether it still has a fixture, and if so, what sort of one. . , And liejre it seems hecessary, by way of introduction, to say ;wo respecting the function of art in general. Tns ess look alarming, suggestive of baflbd wanderings among metaphysical slibtleties. B it let not there ader be afraid. I propose In these pates to spare him everything m the shape of disquisition on thf nature of beauty, and nicely to call his attention Jo one or tvJo characteristics of art which have come of late to be more and ltiore clearly r< cognized. The first of these)characteristic is its play as iect. By tins mean thai art, like play, offers us i pleasurable vmt 01 outlet 01 red and apt energy. I This idea is as old as Aristotle, though 1 a word or may doubt](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22443241_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
