Stated so baldly the doctrine of consistent naturalism verges on the absurd. Eliminate selection of detail and personal vision, and art becomes not only coextensive with life, but shares its confusion and its apparent purposelessness. It loses all interpretative power and ceases to be art. Practically, however, the doctrine led to a very definite form--the naturalistic drama. For, if all indirect treatment of life be discarded, nothing is left but the recording of speech and, if possible, of speech actually overheard. The juxtaposition of such blocks of scrupulously rendered conversation constitutes, in fact, the earliest experiments of Arno Holz. Under the creative energy of Hauptmann, however, the form at once grew into drama, but a drama which sought to rely as little as possible upon the traditional devices of dramaturgic technique. There was to be no implication of plot, no culmination of the resulting struggle in effective scenes, no superior articulateness on the part of the characters. A succession of simple scenes was to present a section of life without rearrangement or heightening. There could be no artistic beginning, for life comes shadowy from life; there could be no artistic ending, for the play of life ends only in eternity. The development of the drama in such a direction had, of course, been foreshadowed. The plays of Ibsen's middle period tend to a simpler rendering of life, and the cold intellect of Strindberg had rejected the "symmetrical dialogue" of the French drama in order "to let the brains of men work unhindered." But Hauptmann carries the same methods extraordinarily far and achieves a poignant verisimilitude that rivals the pity and terror of the most memorable drama of the past. These methods lead, naturally, to the exclusion of several devices. Thus Hauptmann, like Ibsen and Shaw, avoids the division of acts into scenes. The coming and going of characters has the unobtrusiveness but seldom violated in life, and the inevitable artifices are held within rigid bounds. In some of his earlier dramas he also observed the unities of time and place, and throughout his work practices a close economy in these respects. It goes without saying that he rejects the monologue, the unnatural reading of letters, the _raisonneur_ or commenting and providential character, the lightly motivised confession--all the devices, in brief, by which the conventional playwright blandly transports information across the footlights, or unravels the artificial knot which he has tied.