And how? Merely by closing (when it suits him) the open consciousness
of the seer--which he can do without any look of awkwardness or
violence, since it conflicts in no way with the rule of the method.
That rule only required that the author, having decided to share the
point of view of his character, should not proceed to set up another
of his own; it did not debar him from allowing his hero's act of
vision to lapse, his function as the sentient creature in the story to
be intermitted. The hero (I call him so for convenience--he may, of
course, be quite a subordinate onlooker in the story) can at any
moment become impenetrable, a human being whose thought is sealed from
us; and it may seem a small matter, but in fact it has the result that
he drops into the plane of the people whom he has hitherto been seeing
and judging. Hitherto subjective, communicative in solitude, he has
been in a category apart from them; but now he may mingle with the
rest, engage in talk with them, and his presence and his talk are no
more to the fore than theirs. As soon as some description or
discussion of them is required, then, of course, the seer must resume
his part and unseal his mind; but meanwhile, though the reader gets no
direct view of him, still he is there in the dialogue with the rest,
his speech (like theirs) issues from a hidden mind and has the same
dramatic value.
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