The characters of history we seldom
agree about, and are always reconstructing on new information; but the
characters of fiction are subject to no such vicissitudes.
The importance of this matter is hardly yet perceived. Indeed, it is
unreasonable that it should be, when parents, as a rule, have so slight a
feeling of responsibility for the sort of children they bring into the
world. In the coming scientific age this may be changed, and society may
visit upon a grandmother the sins of her grandchildren, recognizing her
responsibility to the very end of the line. But it is not strange that in
the apathy on this subject the novelists should be careless and
inconsiderate as to the characters they produce, either as ideals or
examples. They know that the bad example is more likely to be copied than
to be shunned, and that the low ideal, being easy to, follow, is more
likely to be imitated than the high ideal. But the novelists have too
little sense of responsibility in this respect, probably from an
inadequate conception of their power. Perhaps the most harmful sinners
are not those who send into the world of fiction the positively wicked
and immoral, but those who make current the dull, the commonplace, and
the socially vulgar.
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