Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/9

 Rh inmost soul that it is not true, he can yet half make himself believe it is not false. Most of us have cherished a pleasing, waking dream, and have fondly clung to the sweet illusion while we really knew it was not life. The modern literary stomach is becoming so healthy that it a wants a story at least half true; should the falsehood be too strong, it acts as an emetic, instead of food. These old fairy tales have lost their power to charm, as the stories of the gods and kings went down before. They have lost their charm, for, as we read them now, they wake no answering chord born of the experiences that make up what we know of human life.

When the beauty of realism shall be truly known we shall read the book, or look upon the work of art, and in the light of all we know of life, shall ask our beings whether the picture that the author or the painter creates for us is like the image that is born of the consciousness that moves our soul and the experiences that have made us know.

Realism worships at the shrine of nature; it does not: say that there may not be a sphere in which beings higher than man can live, or that sometime an eye may not rest upon a fairer sunset than was ever born behind the clouds and sea, but it knows that through countless ages