Lakhasly

lN AN unsettled world, our schools and colleges are I confronted with the demand that they prepare the student directly for living. He must be helped to develop the intellectual and emotional capacities for a happy and socially useful life. He must be given the knowledge, the habits, the flexibility, that will enable him to meet un- precedented and unpredictable problems. He needs to un^mandjiimself; he needs to work out harmonious relationships with other people. Above all, he must achieve some philosophy, some inner center from which to view in^e^pective tj^_^ifting society about him; he will influence for good or ill its future development. To have pragmatic value, any knowledge about man and so- cie^^ji3.t:SEiiO_GlA^n give hirn must be assimilated into the stream of his actual life.
Nor does the student require preparation only for some future way of life. Even during his school years, he is very much part^^ the larger world, meeting the im- pact of its social and economic troubles, adjusting to adults who bear the marks of its successes and failures,
discovering the possibilities it holds open to him. As he 3

4 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
plays his minor youthful role now, he is creating the per- sonality and ideals that will pattern his later major role as an adult. Young people themselves are asking every- where, “What do the things that we are learning in school and college mean for the life that we are now liv- ing, or are going to live?”
We teachers of literature have been too modest con- cerning our possible contribution to these demands. Our task, we have felt, is to make our students more sensi- tive to the art of words, to initiate them into the pleas- ures and the knowledge that our literary heritage offers. What we have to provide has appeared rather a refuge from brute reality. We could, it seemed, leave to others those more mundane preoccupations; we had enough to do in busying ourselves with purely esthetic concerns.
When it has been urged that our teaching have some practical relation to the pupil’s immediate human con- cerns, we have pointed to the horrors of the didactic and moralistic approach to literature. With decided justihca- tion, we have opposed any tendency to make of litera- ture merely a handmaiden of the social studies or a body of documents illustrating moral points or sociological generalizations. The Victorians demonstrated the steril- ity of seeking in literature only moraTlessons. In Teply to the pragmatic critics of education, we have recalled the danger of again subjecting the study of literature to this arid point of view. Those who see literature in such terms, we have insisted, reveal their blindness to the spe- cial nature and primary value of the literary experience.
Yet when the literary experience is fully understood,

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 5
it becomes apparent that we teachers of literature have indeed been somewhat short-sighted. We have not al- ways realized that, willy-nilly, ^are constantly affecting the student’s sense of human personality and human so- ciety. We, more directly than most teachers, are con- stantly inculcating in the minds of our students general ideas about human nature and conduct, definite moral attitudes, specific psychological and sociological theories, and habitual responses to people and situations. Preoc- cupied with the major aims of our particular field, we are often not conscious of the fact that we are dealing, in the liveliest terms, with subjects and problems usually thought of as the province of the sociologist, the psycholo- gist, the philosopher or historian. Moreover, we are prof- fering these attitudes and theories in their most easily assimilable form, as they emerge from personal and in- timate experience of specific human situations, presented
with all the sharpness and intensity of art.
The teacher of literature will be the first to admit
that he deals inevitably with human relations, with the experiences of human beings in their diverse personal and social relations. The very nature of literature, he will point out, enforces this. For is not the subject- matter of literature everything that mai^, has thought, or feLt,-OT -created? The lyric poet utters all that the human heart can feel, from joy in “the cherry hung with snow” to the poignant sense of this world “where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.” The novelist sets forth the intricate web of human relationships with
their hidden pattern of motive and emotion. He may

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paintthevastpanoramao£asocietyin3. WarandPeace
or a Human Comedy. He may follow the fate of an entire 'family as in a Forsyte Saga or a Buddenbrooks. He may show us a young man coming to understand himself and life, grappling with his own nature and the society about him, as in Of Human Bondage or The Way of All Flesh, or he may lead us to share in the subtle moods and insights of men and women, as in The Ambassadors or Remembrance of Things Past. The writer of stories catches some significant moment, some mood, some clarifying clash of wills in the life of an individual or a group. He gives us the humorous tale of a Rip Van Winkle or a revelation of character, such as Chekov’s The Darling, or the harsh image of hate and frustra- tion in Wharton’s Ethan Frome. The dramatist builds a dynamic structure out of the tensions and conflicts of intermingled human lives. He may use the comic in- congruities of social conventions and human affecta- tion, as in The Rivals, or he may create a somber sym- phony out of man’s inhumanity to man and the inscrutable whims of fate, as in King Lear. The joys of adventure, the delight in the beauty of the world about us, the intensities of triumph and defeat, the self- questionings and self-realizations, the pangs of love and hate—indeed, as Henry James has said, “all life, all feel- ing, all observation, all vision’’—these are the province of literature. No matter what the form—poem, novel, drama, biography, essay—literature makes alive and com- prehensible to us the myriad ways in which human be- ings meet the infinite possibilities that life offers. And
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6 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 7
always, in books, we seek some close contact with a mind uttering its sense of life. Always too, in greater or lesser degree, the author has written out of a scheme of values, a sense of a social framework or even, per- haps, of a cosmic pattern.
No matter how much else art may offer, no matter how much the writer may be absorbed in solving the technical problems of his craft, in creating with words new forms of esthetic experience, the human element cannot be banished, even if one should wish it. Thus,^^^ ) a writer such as Gertru^^te^ who is preoccupied with technical innovation, will have lasting value only as she suggests to other writers new means of conveying emo- tions and a sense of the flow of life. The most sophis- ticated reader, extremely sensitive to the subtly articu- lated qualities of the poem or play or novel, cannot judge its technical worth except as he assimilates, too, the substance which embodies these qualities. Even the literary work that seems most remote, an imagist poem
or a whimsical fantasy, reveals new notes in the gamut of human experience or derives its quality of escape from its implicit contrast to real life.
Santayana has summed up this basic appeal of litera- ^
ture:
The wonder of an artist’s performance grows with the range of his penetration, with the instinctive sympathy that makes him, in his mortal isolation, considerate of other men’s fate and a great diviner of their secret, so that his work speaks to them kindly, with a deeper assurance than they
1 George Santayana, Reason in Art (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), pp. 228-229.

8 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
could have spoken with to themselves. And the joy of his great sanity, the power of his adequate vision, is not the less intense because he can lend it to others and has borrowed it from a faithful study of the world.
Certainly for the great majority of readers, the human value, the human experience that literature presents, is primary. For them, the formal elements of the work- style and structure, rhythmic flow—function only as the medium through which is communicated the experience the author wishes to convey. The reader seeks to enter into another’s experience, to glimpse the beauty and^n- tensity that the world offers, to fathom the resources of the human spirit, to gain understanding that will make his own experiences more comprehensible, to find molds into which to pour his own seemingly chaotic experi- ences. The teachers of adolescents—in high school or in college—know to what a heightened degree they share this personal or “human” approach to literature.
These pictures of life, these images, too, of what is good and beautiful and true, are, moreover, experi- enced through literature with an immediacy and emo- tional persuasiveness unequalled by practically any other educational medium. Will it be President Madi- son or Rip Van Winkle who will remain more vividly and personally in the student’s memory? Will it be the grain production of the Middle Western states or Gar- land’s A Son of the Middle Border? Will he remember longer the statistics about New England’s shipping or Melville’s Moby Dick? Will the theory of the inferiority complex be more vivid or Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins?

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Will he recall the figures concerning the distribution o£ wealth or Clyde Griffith’s envy of his rich cousins in An^ American Tragedy? Will the provisions of the Four- teenth Amendment or Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Nigger Jim affect him more? Which will be more mean- ingful, the data concerning the change from home to factory manufacture or Silas Marner and Mary Barton?
We do. no-t-intend to depreciate the analytic approach represented by the social sciences. Indeed, it is the aim of this book to make their value to us, as teachers of literature, more apparent. Rather, we should feel that. we, too, play"X^cial role, since the literary materials with which we deal are a potent means of forming the student’s images of the world in which he lives, a potent means of giving sharpened insight into human nature and conduct.
All this is obvious, the English teacher may remark. We deal inevitably with the complexities of human re- lationships in our teaching. But the teacher will not so readily admit that, in the process of elucidating bonk or poem or play, he is, with equal inevitability, taking some sort of attitude toward the human relations and human problems presented. Yet, consciously or uncon- sciously, explicitly or implicitly, the teacher of literature is helping to inculcate particular views of human na- tu^, particular ethical or social philosophies.
^It will be objected that the inculcation of any definite psychological theories or ethical codes is entirely alien to the English teacher. Our aim, it will be claimed, is to
THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 9

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10 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
help our students understand what they read, to help
them develop some critical discrimination, to acquaint I
i them with the history of literature, and to give them ^some insight into literary forms. Surely, this seems to have nothing to do with teaching them specific psy-
chological or sociological theories.
The answer is that when we most sincerely seek to ful- fil these primary aims, we find ourselves inevitably deal- ing with materials that at least imply specific psychologi- cal theories and moral and sociarattitudes. As soon as we recall the very obvious fact that literature involves the whole range of human concerns, we are reminded that it is impossible to deal with literature without as- suming some attitude toward these human materials. Moreover, because our implied moral attitudes, our as- sumptions, our unvoiced systems of social values, are re- enforced by all the electric intensity and persuasiveness of art, we should bring them out into the open for careful scrutiny^
We English Teachers will be extremely scrupulous concerning the scholarly accuracy and balance of our statements about literary history, or the soundness of the standards of literary excellence we inculcate. Our training in normal school, college, and graduate school has been mainly directed toward developing compe- tence along these lines. But how often do we stop to scrutinize the scholarly accuracy or scientific basis of the views concerning human personality and society that insinuate themselves into our work? How often have we consciously and critically worked out the ethi-

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 11
cal criteria that are implied by the judgments passed on literature, and incidentally, on life? How often, even, are we aware of these ever present, implied generaliza- tions concerning man and society? While we have lav- ished thought and attention on the more historic aspects of our work, we have taken these other things for granted and have accepted them as a by-product that requires no special thought or preparation.
What, then, are some of the ways in which our teach- ing does impinge on problems that we usually associate with the concerns, for example, of the psychologist or sociologist? A review of the accepted practice in litera- ture classes in school and in college—and, indeed, of much literary criticism as well—would reveal an amaz- ing amount of attention given to topics which could be classified under the heading of psychological theorizing. Since the vivid creation of living characters makes up so large a part of the novelist’s, the dramatist’s, the biog- rapher’s artj, it is obvious that an understanding of their work implies an attempt to understand completely the characters they present. How can we read Hamlet, The Return of the Native, or Pride and Prejudice, without such a preoccupation with the personalities whose lives they help us to share?
The student, therefore, is often asked to define the nature of the particular characters in the work that he has been reading. He is encouraged, too, to see some causal relationship between motive and action: To what influences did Macbeth respond? What were the {

12 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
Pauses of his immediate success and final failure? What can explain Lady Macbeth’s early determination and / later breakdown? What was the influence of the char- acters upon one another in Silas Marner? ^ We do not need the abundant evidence of textbook and teachers’ manual to know that such questions will arise. After reading Hamlet, the high-school student, as well as the Shakespearean authority, usually turns to theorizing about the rational and irrational elements in human behavior. Conrad’s Lord Jim flings us into the midst of the problems concerning the effect of a sense of guilt and failure upon personality. The teacher, moreover, is usually careful to lead the student to become sensitive ) to the evidence of changes in character that the author /sets forth. This would certainly be true in the case of such works as Ethan Frome, The Forsyte Saga, Huckle- berry Finn, The Rise of Silas Lapham, not to mention such perennial texts as the novels of George Eliot or
the plays of Shakespeare.
Othello may serve to illustrate how impossible it is for us to avoid committing ourselves to some definite as- sumptions, once we embark on anything approaching a discussion of characters. The attempt, for instance, to understand Othello’s rapidly aroused jealousy, to square that with his nature as it is displayed at the opening of the drama, and to see why his jealousy should have led
2 Illustrations will often be drawn from widely used texts. We shall later (Chapters 4, 7) discuss whether, from the point of view of students’ needs and interests, the usual reading lists are well chosen. When examples are drawn from the college level, the conclusions based on them apply equally to the high-school level.

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 13
SO unswervingly to murder, may take a great many forms. Of course, there is a means of evading all these problems by maintaining that the psychological con- sistency of Othello’s character is merely a theatrical il- lusion. Professor E. E. Stoll contends that any psy- chological interpretation is merely superimposed upon a series of incidents, actions, and speeches that were dic- tated by dramatic tradition and theatrical needs for the sole purpose of creating a convincing and exciting play, without any concern for subtle psychological consist- ency. Even accepting these arguments, we shall still find it necessary to explain why Othello gave the im- pression of being a living, integrated personality and not a mere series of theatrical effects. In thinking back over our experience of the tragedy, we shall find that we have fitted what the dramatist offers us into some preconceived notions about human behavior, about the extent of human credulousness or the effects of jealousy. We shall judge whether Othello is a credible character in the light of our own assumptions concerning human nature.
The fact is that the genius of Shakespeare has suc- ceeded in giving us the illusion that we look on at the fate of living creatures. What they do and what hap- pens to them will make sense for us in terms of our own particular understanding of human motivation. For in- stance, itjwou]d_Ji^e_been_alniQsjLimpq^sibk_a germ tion ago for a high-school student to have made the re- lationship between Hamlet and his mother the core of her interpretation of his actions, as a young girl did re-

14 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
cently. Whether she was aware of it or not, or whether or not she had even heard the name Freud, it is obvious that she had absorbed, somehow, somewhere, certain of the psychoanalytic concepts. Similarly, in an interpreta- tion of Othello, the students may show an extraordinary diversity of theoretical frameworks. One student may em- phasize the details offered by the dramatist concerning Desdemona’s and Othello’s sense of racial difference and may base on that his explanation of Othello’s readiness to believe in his wife’s infidelity. Another student might make out a case for Othello as an example of a man fun- damentally insecure, unsure of his ability to hold Des- demona, and thus ready to believe himself betrayed. Another student may react purely in terms of moral judgment and may see Othello’s problem as the strug- gle between the nobler and the baser elements in his na- ture, the latter winning momentarily in his condemna- tion and murder of Desdemona. There will also be the student who will accept the characters’ statements con- cerning the reason for their acts, who will assume that everything they do is consciously willed, and who will pass judgment accordingly.
These varied assumptions concerning human nature will be present even if one gives the class the informa- tion of which Mr. Stoll reminds us, namely, that in Ejira^than dramas, it is often a convention that the husband^elieves at once in his_^ife’s guilt. The stu- dents have experienced the illusion of looking upon life itself and have interpreted it in their own terms. Mr. Stoll will do us the great service of saving us from im-

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 15
puting to Shakespeare interpretations which are merely our own. We nevertheless must face ^(^basie assump- tions of those interpretations. Even though the teacher , will not feel it necessary to pass judgment on all of the psychological systems implied in the students’ reactions, he will at least feel the responsibility o
scrutinize the basis for their psychological assumptions'.
In most cases, both the teacher and the studenTare under the illusion that they are merely clarifying or elaborating the author’s understanding of his characters and his particular view of human motivation. If it were possible for the teacher not to intrude any direct or in- direct comment on these theories, the effect would still be implicitly to approve of the particular conceptions of each author studied. This could result only in the stu- dent’s being subjected to a series of contradictory or inconsistent notions concerning human behavior. He would be left confused, ready to become a victim of some prejudice, either arrived at capriciously or ab- sorbed from repeatedly heard platitudes. Obviously, we want to help him to understand the author’s view of his characters. But the student needs also some means of evaluating it.
Complete objectivity on the part of the teacher is, moreover, impossible. It would be very hard not to re- veal, in some way or other, something of his own en- thusiasms or antipathies—through tone of voice, type of discussion, length of time devoted to the work, or em- phasis upon one aspect rather than another. Without realizing it himself, the teacher will undoubtedly con-

16 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
vey attitudes of approval or disapproval toward differ- ent authors’ philosophies of human behavior. One work will be discussed with more zest than another. When the book happens to reenforce the teacher’s own view of things, the implications of the author’s presentation of character will be emphasized more vigorously. Wuther- ing Heights, though introduced to the students as a great novel, may, nevertheless, not be presented with the same aura of enthusiasm and approbation as, let us say, Adam Bede.
There are even more basic ideas concerning human character that the teacher will convey. In the reading of works of the past—Homer, the Arthurian legends, Beowulf, Elizabethan drama, or Victorian novels—there
.again arises a very important psychological problem: What are the basic human traits that persist despite so- cial and cultural changes, or to what extent are the re- semblances of one age to another, as well as the dif- ferences, due to environmental influences? Indeed, this question of persisting or “universal” human traits is one that arises constantly in discussion of literature. For in- stance, the English curriculum recently suggested by the National Council of English Teachers entitled one of its sections on literature “Studying Human Nature.” ® That phrase human nature recurs again and again in the discussion of books, and always the manner of its use conveys a great many unformulated implications.
3 W. Wilbur Hatfield, Ed., An Experience Curriculum in English, English Monograph No. 4, National Council of Teachers of English, (New York, D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935), p. 50.

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 17
What, for instance, shall we make of such questions as the following, appended to a textbook version of David Copperfield?
How is human nature shown at its best?
How is human nature shown at its worst?
One passage in this chapter shows David beginning to
read human nature correctly. Where is it?
What baseness of human nature is revealed by different
persons in this chapter? What goodness of human nature?
The assumption here seems to be that there is some- thing fixed and unchangeable, a certain number of fixed notes within a given scale, that can be called human na- ture. Yet the very term human nature is itself a highly controversial one. Although it enters very readily into any discussion of literature, how often do we feel im- pelled to face squarely our own conception of its mean- ing? Nevertheless, we do have some set of notions that dominates our sense of human nature, and through our discussion of particular characters and particular works, we are constantly building up in the student’s mind a predisposition toward such a set of ideas. No matter how much we seem to be concerned with discussion of some one character in some specific situation, there will be interwoven with it one or another undeveloped theory of psychological motivation. “These are the significant elements in human p^sonality; these are the kinds of forces that dominate men’s lives and lead them to act in certain ways,’’ are the generalizations constantly im- plied in discussion of specific characters. We cannot em- phasize too much that it would be impossible for the

18 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
teacher, even if he desired it, to evade transmitting cer- tain generalized concepts concerning character and the ways in which it is molded.
IThe ELEMENTS INVOLVED in an understanding of human behavior are, therefore, ones that the teachers of litera- ture should investigate thoroughly. Within recent years, in the fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, great strides have been made toward at least a clarifica- tion of the fundamental problems. The layman’s tend- ency to speak of “human nature” as though it were con- stant and unchanging has been searchingly questioned; the plasticity of the human creature has been discovered to be almost endless. Anthropologists have revealed to us societies in which human beings have suppressed or rigidly regulated some of the drives, such as sex or the desire for self-preservation, that we tend to consider most fundamental and ineradicable. In these societies, human beings act in ways that seem to us “unnatural”; their motivation seems incomprehensible to us—and therefore not quite “human.” Our whole tendency, of course, is to equate human nature with the particular motivations, modes of behavior, and types of choice that we have from childhood observed in the society about us. These traits and ways of behavior seem inherent in human nature itself. The inescapable molding influence of the particular environment and culture into which we are born is a concept difficult to master but ex- tremely important as a basis for any intelligent thinking about the problems of human beings in our own society.

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 19
Certainly it is a subject that the teacher should have clearly in mind before discussing questions concerning character and motivation, or even before introducing, the student to the images of human behavior presented in our own and other literatures.
The danger is that we may unquestioningly adopt the general attitudes toward human nature and conduct that permeate the very atmosphere in which we live. Unfortunately, those ideas which are taken most for granted are often the ones that merit the most skeptical scrutiny. The notion that the conscious motives of the individual are the ones that really determine action is,, for instance, implied in most casual discussions of be- havior. Yet present-day psychology stresses the impor- tance of the unconscious factors motivating behavior. A classroom discussion of essays, letters, journals,, auto- biographies, as well as all the other forms that deal with individual conduct, automatically creates the necessity
for furthering one or the other of these views. What the teacher does not say, or the skepticism that he fails to arouse, will be just as definite a means of reenforcing the usual attitude as if the teacher were* consciously or. deliberately fostering it.
An equally basic approach to human behavior which still dominates the average man’s thinking is the old voluntaristic psychology. This assumes that man’s con- duct is, in largest part, due to his own volition. If man transgresses, it is because he has willed it; the problem of praise and blame is thus a simple one. On the whole, this is the attitude with which the average student will

20 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
approach literature. Again, whether he wishes or not, the teacher will, of necessity, either reenforce or counter- act these assumptions. He will increase the hold of this view of human nature or replace it with a keener sense of the complexity of human motivation and with a broader understanding of the many environmental, physiological, and involuntary psychological factors that influence behavior. Even those writers who, themselves, may not have consciously held this broader view, have nevertheless often given us descriptions of the signifi- cant environmental and physiological factors that may explain their characters’ personalities and actions. The teacher either does or does not make the student aware of the possible causal relationships between such things. In either case, he is helping to determine the student’s sense of these questions.
Despite our desire to leave these issues to the spe- cialists in psychology, we evidently must resign our- selves to the fact that we cannot avoid encroaching upon these extremely important and interesting questions concerning human behavior. The problem lies not in this fact, however, but rather in the fact that the aver- age teacher or college instructor in literature is not necessarily equipped to handle these topics in a scien- tific spirit. The result tends to be rather that the dis- cussion of characters and motivation follows the super- ficial lines of ordinary, everyday conversations about people. The students may thus very easily absorb the idea that on the basis merely of one’s own meager ex- perience, one may make valid judgments on human na-

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 21
ture and conduct. The instructor must offer, therefore, as a check or corrective framework, some knowledge of the dominant conceptions in contemporary psychology.
The teaching of literature involves with equal in- evitability the conscious or unconscious indoctrination of ethical attitudes. It is practically impossible to treat in a vital manner any work of fiction, and indeed, one might say, of literature in general, without becoming involved in some problem of ethks and without speak- ing out of the context of some social philosophy. The ideal personal and social goals that man sets for himself, the values to be sought in any of the innumerable rela- tionships between people, or between the individual and society, in short, a framework of values, is essential to any discussion of human life. In most cases, the con- cern with specihc episodes or characters may veil the fact that these generalized attitudes are being conveyed. Yet any specific discussion necessarily implies the ex- istence of these underlying attitudes.
We all are aware of the average student’s tendency to pass judgment on the actions of characters encountered in fiction. This tendency is, of course, fostered by the voluntaristic psychology we have just mentioned. At any rate, it is obvious that when the student has been really moved by a work of literature, he will be led to ponder on questions of right or wrong, of admirable or anti- social qualities, of justifiable or unjustifiable actions. Sometimes this tendency is furthered by the type of analysis and discussion of literature carried on in the

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What characters do you consider admirable? Why?
There is little in that first question to suggest to the student that perhaps we should not judge guilt at all in the situation so poignantly set forth by Hawthorne. The question rules out the point of view that would seek not to pass judgment, but to understand how the whole
22 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
classroom. An authority on English teaching who works with teachers throughout the country reports that “scores of high-school teachers encourage debates on such questions as; ‘Was Shylock justified?’ ‘Was Hamlet
’’
mad?’ ‘Was it wrong for Godfrey to keep his secret?’ Although undoubtedly the practice of many teachers is superior to the level represented by the suggested ques- tions in textbooks and literary histories, the extraor- dinary number of such questions that ask the student to pass judgment is indicative of typical tendencies in teaching practice. There can be no doubt as to the in- fluence of questions such as those appended to a rep- utable edition of The Scarlet Letter:
Which in your opinion is the guiltiest of the three: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, or Roger Chillingworth? Which suffered most?
i tragic complication grew out of the way of life in that Puritan community. The question rules out, too, the interpretation of this novel as a study in the effect of a sense of sin on character.
Certainly, the teacher of literature will be exerting
, an important social influence through his success or failure in making the student self-conscious and self- I critical concerning this tendency to pass judgment.
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THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 23
Given the strong pressure toward such snap judgments in the ordinary influences acting upon the student, it is particularly incumbent upon the teacher to make the student aware of how often judgment should be de- ferred until the hidden source of motivation or the special circumstances surrounding the action are under- stood. Our approach to literature should be dominated by the desire to understand before attempting to pass judgment.
Surely, it would be impossible, as well as absurd, to attempt to eliminate from oux^jconcern m Jiterature all ethical considerations. First of all, the author himself seeks to make us sympathize with, and to value, one character more than another, one type of choice in life more than another. We should be doing neither litera- ture nor the student a service if we tried to evade these issues or tried to foster a tendency never to come to any conclusions concerning right and wrong. Our task is rather to face squarely the fact that we shall in one way or another be helping to form the student’s system of values. This will lead us, first of all, to scrutinize our own ethical criteria, which must necessarily color any- thing that we say or do in the classroom. It will lead us also to realize that we must not foist upon the student our own particular bias, but must help him to achieve
for himself a rich and humane moral philosophy.
Thus far, we have mentioned only those ethical and psychological assumptions that seem to deal exclusively with the more personal elements in the field of human relations. The nature of literature, as of life itself.

24 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
should remind us, however, that we shall find ourselves equally involved with considerations that are usually thought of as the special concern of the historian, the economist, and the sociologist. This has already been suggested by what we have said concerning the influ- ence of environment on behavior, but that may seem too theoretical an approach. Perhaps we should test this generalization in the light of a more usual phrasing con- cerning the aims and the material involved in the teach- ing of literature.
Let us say that our object is to acquaint the student with the pleasures of tales of adventure, or novels of vigorous action and courage, in strange and exotic set- tings. We may suggest that he read, for instance, Ivan- hoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Last of the Mo- hicans^ A Tale of Two Cities, Mutiny on the Bounty, or Northwest Passage. In these books, certainly, the stu- dent’s attention will be focused upon adventure and the interest of the foreign scenes. Yet it is clear that there will creep in various considerations that we might classify as historical or sociological. The teacher will find it necessary to clarify some of the different social ideas and ethical codes represented by such books. Scott’s novels, for instance, will involve an understanding of the historical periods treated. They may also very likely require an explanation of the early nineteenth-century moral code which Scott brought to bear upon his pic- tures of these periods. Just as we have suggested earlier in connection with such works as the Iliad or Eliza- bethan dramas, there may arise the need to make clear

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 25
that in different ages and in different parts of the world man has created extraordinarily dissimilar social, eco- nomic, and political strucmres wh^ pattern the life of the individual in ways very different from our own.
Social and historical considerations enter even more obviously into the study of any period of literature or the chronological treatment of any form such as poetry or the drama. In presenting these materials, the teacher consciously, and probably even to a greater extent un- consciously, will be impressing upon the minds of the students various notions concerning historical prob- lems; he will be transmitting various positive or nega- tive assumptions concerning the influence of social and political circumstances upon other phases of man’s life. The process of social change (of which literary change is but one aspect), the influence of technological con- ditions upon the social and intellectual life of a society, the various factors that lead men in one age to be ob- sessed by very different aspirations from those of an- other age—such problems are necessarily implied by any survey of the history of literature. Even by seemingly ignoring them, the teacher is affecting, though in a nega- tive way, the student’s ability to understand these prob- lems. Yet these are concepts which the social scientist is also attempting to clarify.
And what shall we say about attitudes toward per- sonal relationships? Here even more obviously, the role of the teacher of literature is clear. Think, for instance, of all of the problems concerning the proper relation- ship between husband and wife, the desirable patterns of

26 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
family life, the images of the desirable mate, that are necessarily raised by the reading of such works as The Idylls of the King, Dombey and Son, A Doll’s House, Ann Veronica, and The Forsyte Saga. Or consider the attitudes toward the child and questions of relations between parents and children, implied in the reading of many of Wordsworth’s poems. The Way of All Flesh, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, The Ordeal of Rich- ard Feverel, and Clayhanger.
The young people to whom we introduce these and the other works of literature are slowly building up their sense of the socially favored types of adjustment in our culture. In books they are meeting extremely compelling images of life that will undoubtedly influence the crystallization of their ultimate attitudes. Here again, the teacher will exert an influence through the whole framework of ideas and attitudes which he builds up around the experience of the particular sense of so- cial relationships presented by any particular work.
We need not extend this recital of the social attitudes and problems with which a concern with literature is intimately associated, for it would lead us to cover the whole range of choices and aspirations and values out of which the individual must weave his own personal phi- losophy. If we were to wander into a school or college library and take at random from the shelves literary works which the students are urged to read, we should find that they offer the student not only the sense of beauty but also in almost every case, some approach to life, some image of people working out a common fate,

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 27
or some assertion that certain kinds of experiences, cer- tain ways of feeling or acting, are v^uable. The teacher must, first of all, be aware of the fact that this absorp tion of social attitudes is a necessary and precious phase^ of the experience of literature; he will be led, then, to investigate his own role in this process; he will realize that he, himself, is playing an active part in it. All that we said earlier concerning the many subtle ways in which the teacher influences the student’s assimilation of psychological theories applies even more clearly to the student’s assimilation of social attitudes.
How QUICK WE TEACHERS OF LITERATURE WOuld be tO condemn the teacher of history or zoology who inter- larded his discussions with dogmatic statements about literature, or even worse, instilled into his students’ minds fixed attitudes and preconceptions concerning literary experience. How unscholarly we should think the zoology instructor who felt that what he had ab- sorbed about literature from the general atmosphere, from newspapers and magazines, and perhaps from a random course at college, justified his passing on the merits of Milton’s poetry or his insinuating that free verse was a ridiculous innovation. How absurd it would seem if he should feel competent to throw out casual judgments as to the authorship of the disputed passages in Sir Thomas More. Yet too often we ourselves feel that the social concepts and attitudes absorbed from everyday life, plus a scattered reading on a subject here and there, or a rapid survey of the held in a college

28 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
course, are ample preparation for our using literature as the springboard for discussions of human nature and. society. We are forced, of course, to the rejoinder that the very nature of literature necessitates such discus- sions; we cannot evade these matters by judicious selec- tion. But this merely lays us open to the accusation of having failed adequately to equip ourselves to handle a vital and inevitable phase of our teaching.
Probably the comparative youth and lack of unanim- ity of the social sciences explain in part our irresponsi- ble encroachment upon their territory. We long ago assimilated a more respectful attitude toward the point of view and general concepts of the natural sciences. We should feel the English teacher grievously lacking who propagated in his classroom the idea that the sun moves around the earth (cf. Paradise Lost, Book Eighth), or that incantation was the approved method of curing the sick. Erom a “purely esthetic” point of view, which ignores the fact that the person experiencing the work of literature comes to it out of a particular world and will return to it, this may not matter. One could appre- ciate many literary works just as well “esthetically” though holding these exploded beliefs. The fact is, nevertheless, that the student will return to the world of today. His literary experience will have been crip- pling or destructive, rather than helpful, if he brings from it ideas that are^elics of an outgrown past.
If this is true concerning the materials of the natural sciences, how much more true is it of the need for scrupulousness concerning psychological, social, and

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 29
ethical concepts that the student will absorb from his reading! Hence the need to build up in the student a discriminating attitude. Just as he will be able to read and enjoy Milton’s Paradise Lost without necessarily accepting Milton’s cosmology, so he must be able to ab- sorb from the literature of the past and of the present what is sound and relevant to his own needs in this age in which he lives. Is it not possible to help the student to a zestful reading, let us say, of Walter Scott and yet to give him a sense of the anachronism, particularly for an American, of an unquestioning acceptance of Scott’s feudalistic philosophy? The “literature teacher’’ may not be primarily concerned with giving scientific in- formation; still it is his responsibility to further the as- similation of ideas and habits of thought that will be conducive to social understanding. He shares with all. other teachers the task of providing the student with; the proper equipment for making sound social and*, ethical judgments.
Indeed, the English teacher will undoubtedly play
an especially important part in this process, since it is very likely that the student’s social adjustments will be much more powerfully influenced by what he absorbs through literature than by what he learns in the usual impersonal and theoretical social-science courses.^ This point, which we shall develop more fully in Chapter 7, makes even more imperative a concern with the phases
4 This argument cuts both ways, of course. Everything that we have said leads to the conclusion that literary materials have their place also in the social-science curriculum.

30 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION
of literature teaching that we have emphasized in this chapter.
The already overburdened literary scholar, aware of the great mass of materials and information that he must absorb, will probably indignantly demand whether he is now being called upon to assimilate also the great body of knowledge accumulated by the social sciences. Certainly, we do not contend that the prospective teacher of English should be given the complete train- ing demanded of the social scientist. This would be impossible in most cases. It does seem imperative, how- ever, that enough of the dead lumber of English train- ing, in normal school, college, and graduate school, be eliminated so that leisure is left for building up a sound
acquaintance with at least the general aspects of cur- rent scientific thought on psychological and social prob- lems. And practising teachers must feel the necessity for constantly increasing such knowledge. They cannot neg- lect to establish a rational basis for this inevitable and highly important phase of their influence.
It has been our purpose in this chapter to demon- strate how intimately the materials of human relations —psychology, social philosophy, and ethics—enter into the study of literature. But this is not the complete pic- ture. There are still many problems to be clarified. We now must go on to work out the relation between this much neglected aspect of our work and the more widely recognized concerns of English teaching.
We have been suggesting considerations that are most often stressed by those who espouse the “social ap-

THE CHALLENGE OF LITERATURE 31
proach” to literature. Unfortunately, the champions of
this view, in a pendulum-swing reaction against extreme
estheticism, have sometimes been led to neglect the fact
that literature is a form of art. The defenders of “esthetic
values,” on the contrary, have often felt it necessary to
reject any social interpretations. It is our thesis that no
contradiction should exist between these two phases of
art—that, in fact, they are inextricably interrelated.
Those who see in literature only social documents and
those who admit only so-called pure esthetic values offer
equally hmited insights. The increase of literary sensi-
tivity, no less than the fostering of social awareness, re-
quires a concern for the issues raised in this chapter. Our
aim in this book is to further the development of more
fruitful understanding and appreciation of literature
through a philosophy of teaching based on a balanced
recognition of the many complex elements that make up
the literary experience. Rejecting any limiting approach,
we shall center our attention on literature in its living
context. We shall find that, though the social and
esthetic elements in literature may be theoretically dis-
tinguishable they are in actuality inseparable. Much of j
the confused thinking about the esthetic and the social aspects of art would be eliminated if the debaters would realize that an object can have more than one value: It can yield the kind of sensuous and emotional fulfilment which we call esthetic—it can be enjoyed in itself—and at the same time have a social origin and social effects. The task of the coming chapters will be to make this point clear and to elaborate its implications for the reader and the teacher.