The psychologic roots of prose literature are the impulses to self- revelation and to acquaintance with life. Every thing that has once entered into our lives, no matter how intimate, craves to come out; the instinct of gregariousness extends, as we have noted, to the whole of the mind. The completely private and uncommunicated makes us as uncertain and afraid of ourselves as physical loneliness. But in addition to the dislike for any form of isolation, even when purely spiritual, there is another factor which determines self-revelation,--the desire for praise. We want a larger audience for our exploits than the people immediately involved in them, so we tell them to any listening ear. The friend whispering his confession illustrates the one motive; the hero bragging of his deeds illustrates the other. The desire to hear another's story is the obverse of the desire to tell one about oneself, just as the impulse to welcome a friend is the complement of his impulse to seek our companionship; we receive from him exactly what he takes from us,--an enlargement of our social world, the creation of another social bond. If we cannot hear his story from his own lips, we want to hear it from some third person, who will surely be glad to relate it, since he, as bearer of the news, will bring to himself something of the glory of the hero. There is malice enough in gossip, but most of it is the purest kind of mental and emotional satisfaction. Our interest in it is of exactly the same kind as our interest in novels and romances. The stories which we tell about ourselves and our friends make up the ephemeral, yet real prose literature of daily life. Most stories probably had their origin in more or less literal transcriptions from real life. History is the basis of literature. However, as stories are passed from one person to another, fiction encroaches upon fact. Details are forgotten and have to be filled out from the imagination; then a sheer delight in invention enters in; it is so interesting to see if you can make a world as good as the real one, or even outdo it in strangeness and wonder, provided, of course, you can still get yourself believed. Even in the relation of real events, creation inevitably plays a part; the whole of any story is not worth telling; there must be selection, emphasis upon the most striking particulars, and synthesis. Besides the opportunity which it gives of unhampered control over the story, fiction has still other advantages. The interest which we take in tales of real life is bound up with personal appeals. This is most racy in gossip, but something of the kind lingers in all narratives of fact. Literature can become disinterested and universal in its appeal only when, keeping the semblance of life, it becomes a work of pure imagination. It is then, as Aristotle said, more philosophical, that is, more universal and typical, than history.