{"id":"01KG8AKAH86F7PAN4QBKKQBWCE","cid":"bafkreigykvwwvfw5pyi3gzki5wsd24omf66bkz3yh6zidzlsgueeyllj7u","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3141,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":3078,"text":"CHAPTER XIV.\r\n\r\nWORTH THE CONSIDERATION OF THOSE TO WHOM IT MAY PROVE WORTH CONSIDERING.\r\n\r\n\r\nAs the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the\r\npresent must consist of one glancing backwards.\r\n\r\nTo some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of\r\nconfidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the\r\nmoment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have\r\nbetrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and\r\neven so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be\r\nurged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully\r\nsee to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look\r\nfor, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency\r\nshould be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable\r\nenough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it\r\ncouple with another requirement--equally insisted upon, perhaps--that,\r\nwhile to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction\r\nbased on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact,\r\nthat, in real life, a consistent character is a _rara avis_? Which\r\nbeing so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can\r\nhardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from\r\nperplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at\r\nhis wits' ends to understand living character, shall those who are not\r\nsages expect to run and read character in those mere phantoms which flit\r\nalong a page, like shadows along a wall? That fiction, where every\r\ncharacter can, by reason of its consistency, be comprehended at a\r\nglance, either exhibits but sections of character, making them appear\r\nfor wholes, or else is very untrue to reality; while, on the other hand,\r\nthat author who draws a character, even though to common view\r\nincongruous in its parts, as the flying-squirrel, and, at different\r\nperiods, as much at variance with itself as the butterfly is with the\r\ncaterpillar into which it changes, may yet, in so doing, be not false\r\nbut faithful to facts.\r\n\r\nIf reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters\r\nas nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader\r\nunerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of\r\nconception and those of life as elsewhere. Experience is the only guide\r\nhere; but as no one man can be coextensive with _what is_, it may be\r\nunwise in every ease to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of\r\nAustralia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists,\r\nappealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in\r\nreality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in\r\nsome way, artificially stuck on.\r\n\r\nBut let nature, to the perplexity of the naturalists, produce her\r\nduck-billed beavers as she may, lesser authors some may hold, have no\r\nbusiness to be perplexing readers with duck-billed characters. Always,\r\nthey should represent human nature not in obscurity, but transparency,\r\nwhich, indeed, is the practice with most novelists, and is, perhaps, in\r\ncertain cases, someway felt to be a kind of honor rendered by them to\r\ntheir kind. But, whether it involve honor or otherwise might be mooted,\r\nconsidering that, if these waters of human nature can be so readily seen\r\nthrough, it may be either that they are very pure or very shallow. Upon\r\nthe whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its\r\ninconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its\r\ncontrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out,\r\nthereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always\r\nrepresenting it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he\r\nclearly knows all about it.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJKFFEB6SSPM714EMFFYK","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKAH8XCY6X3X5W7HVVCWS","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:00.552Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:08.285Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}