says to its readers: "You are wicked, selfish, diseased, but horribly fascinating, and I'm going to set you right by diagnosis"; and the reader feels a sting in the fascination. Stevenson says, "We are all mighty fine fellows; and life is a field of battle; but it is better to be a fool than to be dead; and the true success is to labor"; and the reader feels that Stevenson is One of Us! He is not austere; he does not ask uncomfortable questions; he makes no claims upon his readers' judgment, but only upon their self-esteem and their gratified assent.[1]
I think that this distinction between Stevenson and the modern school is false.
Stevenson begins, just as the moderns do, just as Llewelyn Powys, for example, does: he begins with austere diagnosis. He makes all the fundamental admissions which they make: he admits the wickedness, selfishness, disease, and horrible fascination at the heart of life. But he recognizes also that mere diagnosis does not "set you right." A diagnosis such as that of Llewelyn Powys, which I have just discussed, is not the end, but only the starting point, of a personal philosophy which is to be truly realistic.
The real distinction between Stevenson and the moderns is that, while they devote themselves to elaborating diagnosis, he devoted himself to the elaboration of therapy. Or, to shift from Mr. Swinnerton's clinical images, let us say: At the age of twenty-five, Stevenson had definitely ascertained what was the matter with him and with life. He had looked into all the abysses which Mr. Powys is astonishingly fathoming at forty-
- ↑ R. L. Stevenson, A Critical Study, New York, 1923.
