It is that, primarily, through the philosophy of life which the author has expressed in it. The “fear of living” is a new and deep-seated evil among us. We value our peace above everything, we wish to keep it at all hazards, however dearly we must pay for it. We shun responsibilities, avoid risks and chances of struggle, flee from adventure and danger, seek to escape from everything that makes for the charm and value of life. We no longer have any faith in the future, because we no longer have faith in ourselves. Writers used for a time to chronicle this sickly weakness under the name of “dilettantism.” Then, the fashion having changed, they began to exalt the claims of energy. But what they understand by that word is nothing but the keen desire to satisfy our passions and ambitions. In place of lazy selfishness they have substituted ruthless selfishness. To spare oneself all kinds of boredom, or to procure oneself the greatest amount of pleasure, these are the only two conceptions they recommend to us. But here is a writer who thinks that to live does not mean to bury oneself in a corner, nor yet to amass money and wear oneself I out with pleasure. He thinks that a life in which I one has suffered, struggled, and worked for others, not for oneself, that a life whose years are counted by emotions, sacrifices, devotions, and renunciations, is a well-filled life. He says it, he believes it, and, while we read it, he makes us believe it. It may be absurd, extravagant, and romantic to the last degree but it is not commonplace. The characters in the “Fear of Living” are almost all respectable people. Now it is a dogma in our literature that respectable people are not interesting. The heroes of a novel may be rogues, even mediocre and vulgar rogues, turned out “by the dozen”; their adventures may be reduced to some mean little act, commonplace, ridiculous, and sensational. It does not matter; they win our sympathy, and we are ready to find them amusing or touching. But a family that ruins itself to save the honor of a name, a mother who lets her children go one by one to do their duty, a young man who prefers the charm of a pure marriage to the temptations of a sensual love--what interest have such people for us? And even if we do meet the like in our daily life, in the name of Heaven let us leave them where they are, and not let them burden the novel with their sad faces! Such is the prejudice that M. Henry Bordeaux has not feared to face boldly.