Our interest in the fictional world of the writer is, moreover, essentially the same as our interest in the real world. Its persons arouse in us the same emotions of admiration, love, or dislike. They satisfy the same need for social stimulation, the same curiosity about life. Just as we have certain instincts and habits of movement that make us restless when they are not satisfied, and afford us a wild joy in walking and running when we are released from confinement, so we have certain instincts and habits of feeling towards persons which demand objects and produce joy when companions are found. An unsatisfied or superabundant sociability lies back of our love of fiction. We read because we are lonely or because our fellow men have become trite and fail to stimulate us sufficiently. If our fellows were not so reticent, if they would talk to us and tell us their stories with the freedom and the brightness of a Stevenson, or if their lives were so fresh and vivid that we never found them dull, perhaps we should not read at all. But, as it is, we can satisfy our craving for knowledge of life only by extending our social world through fiction. Fiction may teach us, edify us, make us better men--it may serve all these purposes incidentally, but its prime purpose as art is to provide us with new objects for social feeling and knowledge. The interest which we take in fictitious action is also like that which we take in real action. The same emotions of desire for the attainment of a goal, suspense, hope, fear, excitement, curiosity and its satisfaction, joy, despair, are aroused. And we have a need to experience these emotions at high pitch greater than our everyday lives can satisfy. Our lives are seldom adventurous all over; there are monotonous interludes with no melody, offering us little that is new to learn. Our love for war and sport shows that we were not built organically for humdrum. Now literature helps to make up for this deficiency in real life by providing us with adventures in which we can participate imaginatively, and from which we can derive new knowledge. If real life did supply us with all the intense living that we demand, we might not care to read, although the love of adventure grows by feeding, and many an active man revels in tales which simulate his own exploits.