In the Oriental apologue an
advance is made. The parables of our Lord, in particular, are admirable
examples of its method. The characters are few, the situations common,
the action simple, and the moral truth or lesson enforced is so
completely clothed in the tale that it needs no explanation; at the same
time, the mind is aware of the teacher. In the higher forms of
literature, however, the fusion of ethics with life may be complete.
Here the poet works so subtly that the mind is not aware of the
illumination of this light which comes without the violence of the
preacher, until after the fact; and, indeed, the effect is wrought more
through the sympathies than the reason. In such a case literature,
though it conveys moral with other kinds of truth, is not open to the
charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and
abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished
because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its
very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative
a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may
teach, as has been said, what the poet never dreamed his work contained.
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