Modern culture is only the first beginning of work for a great future, work which will perhaps go on for tens of thousands of years, in order that man may, if only in the remote future, come to know the truth of the real God--that is not, I conjecture, by seeking in Dostoievsky, but by clear knowledge, as one knows twice two are four. If one thing is obvious, it is that the writer of these sentences is an enthusiast. Take him, again, when he is protesting against “trade-marks and labels” for artists, and announcing his creed: My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom--freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist. In regard to literature, he believed not in the disheartening sort of realism but in a temperate idealism, as we learn from an excellent parable: Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham only noticed that his father was a drunkard, and completely lost sight of the fact that he was a genius, that he had built an ark and saved the world. Writers must not imitate Ham.... On the other hand, Tchehov was always alert to defend the practice of honest realism in literature. He refused to admit that it is the object of literature to “unearth the pearl from the refuse-heap”: A writer is not a confectioner, not a provider of cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound, under contract, by his sense of duty and his conscience; having put his hand to the plough, he mustn’t turn back, and however distasteful, he must conquer his squeamishness and soil his imagination with the dirt of life. He is just like any ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper correspondent, out of a feeling of fastidiousness or from a wish to please his readers, would describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railway contractors? In Tchehov’s view, it is the duty of the artist to tell the truth about his characters, not to draw morals from them. “The artist,” he declares, “must not be the judge of his characters and of their conversations, but merely an impartial witness.” The artist must, no doubt, strive after some such impartiality as this. But the great artist will never quite attain to it. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Tchehov himself, all lavished affection on some of their characters and withheld it from others.