But the
resource of which I speak is of a finer sort.
It gives to the author the power of imperceptibly edging away from the
seer, leaving his consciousness, ceasing to use his eyes--though still
without substituting the eyes of another. To revert for a moment to
the story told in the first person, it is plain that in that case the
narrator has no such liberty; his own consciousness must always lie
open; the part that he plays in the story can never appear in the same
terms, on the same plane, as that of the other people. Though he is
not visible in the story to the reader, as the others are, he is at
every moment _nearer_ than they, in his capacity of the seeing eye,
the channel of vision; nor can he put off his function, he must
continue steadily to see and to report. But when the author is
reporting _him_ there is a margin of freedom. The author has not so
completely identified himself, as narrator, with his hero that he can
give him no objective weight whatever. If necessary he can allow him
something of the value of a detached and phenomenal personage, like
the rest of the company in the story, and that without violating the
principle of his method. He cannot make his hero actually
visible--there the method is uncompromising; he cannot step forward,
leaving the man's point of view, and picture him from without. But he
can place the man at the same distance from the reader as the other
people, he can almost lend him the same effect, he can make of him a
dramatic actor upon the scene.
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