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.  I think that the claim cannot be contested, and that the position is unassailable.  Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.  But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer ground, being based on the reality of forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting—­on second-hand impression.  Thus fiction is nearer truth.  But let that pass.  A historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.  As is meet for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian of fine consciences.

Of course, this is a general statement; but I don’t think its truth will be, or can be questioned.  Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and, besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be put into the nutshell of a phrase.  The fact remains that he has made his choice, and that his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success of his art.  He has taken for himself the greater part.  The range of a fine conscience covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice discrimination of shades of conduct.  A fine conscience is more concerned with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a worldly sense.  There is, in short, more truth in its working for a historian to detect and to show.  It is a thing of infinite complication and suggestion.  None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James.  He has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places.  There are no secrets left within his range.  He has disclosed them as they should be disclosed—­that is, beautifully.  And, indeed, ugliness has but little place in this world of his creation.  Yet, it is always felt in the truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses close upon it.  It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism of their mistakes.  For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.  What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the intangible, ever-present, right.  It is most visible in their ultimate triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of renunciation.  Energetic, not violent:  the distinction is wide, enormous, like that between substance and shadow.