Action, the second great branch of life, is generalized by plot. It
lies, as has been said, in the region of experience. Character, though
it may be conceived as latent, can be presented only energetically as it
finds outward expression. It cannot be shown in a vacuum. It embodies or
reveals itself in an act; form and feature, as expressive of character,
are the record of past acts. This act is the link that binds type to
plot. By means of it character enters the external world, determining
the course of events and being passively affected by them. Plot takes
account of this interplay and sets forth its laws. It is, therefore,
more deeply engaged with the environment, as type is more concerned with
the man in himself. It is, initially, a thing of the outward as type is
a thing of the inward world. How, then, does literature, through plot,
reduce the environment in its human relations to organic form?
The course of events, taken as a whole, is in part a process of nature
independent of man, in part the product of his will. It is a continuous
stream of phenomena in great multiplicity, and proceeding in a temporal
sequence.
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