compelling, and would be heard and obeyed for many a year, whether or not it became suspect for a siren’s call. In these circumstances the _First Principles_ came really as a god-send. The book had the impressive appearance of being the voice of science itself uttering at last the Truth. Yet its weight and authority left undisturbed Mr. Dreiser’s worldliness and some of his dear prejudices. It left, indeed, everything as it was with him; but it did appear to rob everything of value, and so, as he thought, left him crushed and hopeless. Actually, however, it offered him a species of consolation for the crushed and hopeless state into which he had already been plunged by his efforts after a “realistic” way of life. A species of consolation;--because, though the dehumanised conception of the world and life presented by naturalism was “cold comfort,” still, it did enable one who felt badly used to turn upon the universe and _say_, if not feel, that life was a meaningless and unimportant phenomenon anyhow. The _Synthetic Philosophy_, Mr. Dreiser tells the world, “eternally verified” his “gravest fears as to the unsolvable disorder and brutality of life.” Precisely; as these turns of phrase show, it left his feelings what they had been, likewise his desires and aims, and his sentimental humanitarianism and more. What Spencer gave him was something to fall back upon and _say_ in hopeless or disillusioned moments, but something which, leaving him otherwise where he was, even helped to preserve him inviolate from self-criticism or self-discipline. Following the guidance of temperament and mood, he took from Spencer what he wanted, and nothing else; and it so happened that this included little or nothing specifically characteristic of Spencer as against various other naturalistic thinkers. The tone, indeed, of Mr. Dreiser’s naturalism, as well as its emphasis upon accident and chaotic disorder, is not only more sophisticated than that of Spencer’s, but abruptly contradictory of the Synthetic gentleman’s grandiose fancy of one eternal, universal law infallibly working to bring about perfection in all things earthly. His dark emotional naturalism--and, it may be added, several of the contradictions it has involved him in--bring Mr. Dreiser, as some of his readers have perceived, close to Thomas Hardy, in proportion as he is far from Spencer. He does not mention Hardy in the record of his development which I have been following, but he is said to have confessed to “an enchanted discovery” of that novelist in 1896, and his delight is what was to be expected. As far as one can see, however, his indebtedness to Hardy, though real, is not important. II