Like
a natural force which is obscured as much as illuminated by the
multiplicity of phenomena, the power of renunciation is obscured by the
mass of weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and false steps and
compromises which make up the sum of our activity. But no man or woman
worthy of the name can pretend to anything more, to anything greater. And
Mr. Henry James's men and women are worthy of the name, within the limits
his art, so clear, so sure of itself, has drawn round their activities.
He would be the last to claim for them Titanic proportions. The earth
itself has grown smaller in the course of ages. But in every sphere of
human perplexities and emotions, there are more greatnesses than one--not
counting here the greatness of the artist himself. Wherever he stands,
at the beginning or the end of things, a man has to sacrifice his gods to
his passions, or his passions to his gods. That is the problem, great
enough, in all truth, if approached in the spirit of sincerity and
knowledge.
In one of his critical studies, published some fifteen years ago, Mr.
Henry James claims for the novelist the standing of the historian as the
only adequate one, as for himself and before his audience.
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