only modifies but shapes the work. And hence, over the far larger
proportion of the field of literature, the health or disease of the
writer's mind or momentary humour forms not only the leading
feature of his work, but is, at bottom, the only thing he can
communicate to others. In all works of art, widely speaking, it is
first of all the author's attitude that is narrated, though in the
attitude there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life.
An author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow
faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of the
sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim, some
of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and
unwillingly recognised in his experience. Hence the smallness, the
triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian
religion; and hence we find equal although unsimilar limitation in
works inspired by the spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste
for high society. So that the first duty of any man who is to
write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set
himself up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that
his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything
but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the
good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not
wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should
recognise from the first that he has only one tool in his workshop,
and that tool is sympathy. {13}

The second duty, far harder to define, is moral. There are a
thousand different humours in the mind, and about each of them,
when it is uppermost, some literature tends to be deposited. Is
this to be allowed? Not certainly in every case, and yet perhaps
in more than rigourists would fancy. It were to be desired that