There is nothing romantic about all this, declares Dreiser. This is not romance, it is truth such as can be found at any time in the dailies. Dreiser is satisfied with this kind of material. There is more than a fortuitous resemblance between story Number II and “The Financier.” The last-mentioned episode reads very much like “An American Tragedy.” With his imagination of facts the novelist has been able to unravel in many hundred pages all the possibilities contained in a few newspaper headlines. This confession about his sources will save many scholars, in years to come the trouble they have to face when they try to identify Père Grandet or Emma Bovary. Only a romantic writer can think of hiding what he borrows from life. The true realist, Dreiser or Zola, is not ashamed of being caught, his camera in hand. The closer the resemblance between the original and the copy, the greater the art which produced it. * * * * * As a philosopher, as well as an artist, Dreiser still remains a journalist. His novels are no more or no less immoral than a newspaper. Why should we grant the newspaperman the right to record coolly and without comment a crime or a scandal, and yet brand the novelist as immoral when he chooses to do the same? Dreiser does not comment in his novels; he reports. His philosophy is not ready-made; it has not been elaborated in a study or in a pulpit. It was born in the realm of chance and of current events, from incidents and accidents, close to the morgue, the charnel house, the brothel, the slum, the hospital, the police station, where Dreiser used to report. There wisdom came to him as it did to Hamlet in the churchyard. Life is the text and our actions are the comments. A loyal and sincere seeker of truth, Theodore Dreiser never interposes his own personality between his characters and the reader. In this respect he is still more objective than his master, Balzac. He preaches no sermon. He shows things and people as they are. If there is somewhere a conscience, it must be in the heart of him or her who reads through the book. Dreiser is a moralist, but he preaches his morals outside of his novels. With one hand he composes his massive, clumsy and realistic narratives, deliberately objective and amoral. With the other he holds the pen of the traveler, the philosopher and the essayist. Read, for instance, his admirable essay on “The Inevitable Equation.” It is as clear an elucidation of the writer’s mind as could be expected. This sort of double-dealing with his readers came out of the author’s loyalty toward others and himself. A conscientious and skilful journalist will not make the mistake of confusing the news with the editorial matter. Philosophy and facts belong to two different orders. The one is the order of the mind, the other that of nature. Better keep them apart than to see one giving the lie to the other. _Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas._