There is another aspect presented by Literature.  It has become a profession; to many a serious and elevating profession; to many more a mere trade, having miserable trade-aims and trade-tricks.  As in every other profession, the ranks are thronged with incompetent aspirants, without seriousness of aim, without the faculties demanded by their work.  They are led to waste powers which in other directions might have done honest service, because they have failed to discriminate between aspiration and inspiration, between the desire for greatness and the consciousness of power.  Still lower in the ranks are those who follow Literature simply because they see no other opening for their incompetence; just as forlorn widows and ignorant old maids thrown suddenly on their own resources open a school—­no other means of livelihood seeming to be within their reach.  Lowest of all are those whose esurient vanity, acting on a frivolous levity of mind, urges them to make Literature a plaything for display.  To write for a livelihood, even on a complete misapprehension of our powers, is at least a respectable impulse.  To play at Literature is altogether inexcusable:  the motive is vanity, the object notoriety, the end contempt.

I propose to treat of the Principles of Success in Literature, in the belief that if a clear recognition of the principles which underlie all successful writing could once be gained, it would be no inconsiderable help to many a young and thoughtful mind.  Is it necessary to guard against a misconception of my object, and to explain that I hope to furnish nothing more than help and encouragement?  There is help to be gained from a clear understanding of the conditions of success; and encouragement to be gained from a reliance on the ultimate victory of true principles.  More than this can hardly be expected from me, even on the supposition that I have ascertained the real conditions.  No one, it is to be presumed, will imagine that I can have any pretension of giving recipes for Literature, or of furnishing power and talent where nature has withheld them.  I must assume the presence of the talent, and then assign the conditions under which that talent can alone achieve real success, no man is made a discoverer by learning the principles of scientific Method; but only by those principles can discoveries be made; and if he has consciously mastered them, he will find them directing his researches and saving him from an immensity of fruitless labour.  It is something in the nature of the Method of Literature that I propose to expound.  Success is not an accident.  All Literature is founded upon psychological laws, and involves principles which are true for all peoples and for all times.  These principles we are to consider here.

II.