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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart and Science, by Wilkie Collins
#32 in our series by Wilkie Collins
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Title: Heart and Science
A Story of the Present Time
Author: Wilkie Collins
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7892]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 31, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART AND SCIENCE ***
Produced by James Rusk
HEART AND SCIENCE
by Wilkie Collins
Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time
TO
SARONY
(OF NEW YORK)
ARTIST; PHOTOGRAPHER,
AND
GOOD FRIEND
PREFACE
TO READERS IN GENERAL
I.
You are the children of Old Mother England, on both sides of the
Atlantic; you form the majority of buyers and borrowers of novels; and
you judge of works of fiction by certain inbred preferences, which but
slightly influence the other great public of readers on the continent
of Europe.
The two qualities in fiction which hold the highest rank in your
estimation are: Character and Humour. Incident and dramatic situation
only occupy the second place in your favour. A novel that tells no
story, or that blunders perpetually in trying to tell a story--a novel
so entirely devoid of all sense of the dramatic side of human life,
that not even a theatrical thief can find anything in it to steal--will
nevertheless be a work that wins (and keeps) your admiration, if it has
Humour which dwells on your memory, and characters which enlarge the
circle of your friends.
I have myself always tried to combine the different merits of a good
novel, in one and the same work; and I have never succeeded in keeping
an equal balance. In the present story you will find the scales
inclining, on the whole, in favour of character and Humour. This has
not happened accidentally.
Advancing years, and health that stands sadly in need of improvement,
warn me--if I am to vary my way of work--that I may have little time to
lose. Without waiting for future opportunities, I have kept your
standard of merit more constantly before my mind, in writing this book,
than on some former occasions.
Still persisting in telling you a story--still refusing to get up in
the pulpit and preach, or to invade the platform and lecture, or to
take you by the buttonhole in confidence and make fun of my Art--it has
been my chief effort to draw the characters with a vigour and breadth
of treatment, derived from the nearest and truest view that I could get
of the one model, Nature. Whether I shall at once succeed in adding to
the circle of your friends in the world of fiction--or whether you will
hurry through the narrative, and only discover on a later reading that
it is the characters which have interested you in the story--remains to
be seen. Either way, your sympathy will find me grateful; for, either
way, my motive has been to please you.
During its periodical publication correspondents, noting certain
passages in "Heart and Science," inquired how I came to think of
writing this book. The question may be readily answered in better words
than mine. My book has been written in harmony with opinions which have
an indisputable claim to respect. Let them speak for themselves.
SHAKESPEARE'S OPINION.--"It was always yet the trick of our
English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common."
_(King Henry IV., Part II.)_
WALTER SCOTT'S OPINION--"I am no great believer in the extreme
degree of improvement to be derived from the advancement of Science;
for every study of that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent,
to harden the heart." _(Letter to Miss Edgeworth.)_
FARADAY'S OPINION.--"The education of the judgment has for its
first and its last step--Humility." _(Lecture on Mental Education, at
the Royal Institution.)_
Having given my reasons for writing the book, let me conclude by
telling you what I have kept out of the book.
It encourages me to think that we have many sympathies in common; and
among them, that most of us have taken to our hearts domestic pets.
Writing under this conviction, I have not forgotten my responsibility
towards you, and towards my Art, in pleading the cause of the harmless
and affectionate beings of God's creation. From first to last, you are
purposely left in ignorance of the hideous secrets of Vivisection. The
outside of the laboratory is a necessary object in my landscape--but I
never once open the door and invite you to look in. I trace, in one of
my characters, the result of the habitual practice of cruelty (no
matter under what pretence) in fatally deteriorating the nature of
man--and I leave the picture to speak for itself. My own personal
feeling has throughout been held in check. Thankfully accepting the
assistance rendered to me by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, by Mrs. H. M.
Gordon, and by Surgeon-General Gordon, C.B., I have borne in mind (as
they have borne in mind) the value of temperate advocacy to a good
cause.
With this, your servant withdraws, and leaves you to the story.
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