Pictured by him, as he might
himself look back on them, they would drop to the same plane as the
rest of the scene, the picture of the other people in the story; his
state of mind would figure in his description on the same terms as the
world about him, it would simply be a matter for him to describe like
another. In the book as it is, Strether personally has nothing to do
with the impression that is made by the mazy career of his
imagination, he has no hand in the effect it produces. It speaks for
itself, it spreads over the scene and colours the world just as it did
for Strether. It is immediately in the foreground, and the "seeing
eye" to which it is presented is not his, but the reader's own.
No longer a figure that leans and looks out of a window, scanning a
stretch of memory--that is not the image suggested by Henry James's
book. It is rather as though the reader himself were at the window,
and as though the window opened straight into the depths of Strether's
conscious existence. The energy of his perception and discrimination
is there seen at work. His mind is the mirror of the scene beyond it,
and the other people in the book exist only in relation to him; but
his mind, his own thought of them, is there absolutely, its restless
evolution is in full sight. I do not say that this is a complete
account of the principle on which the book is constructed; for indeed
the principle goes further, encompassing points of method to be dealt
with later.
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