The _Illustrations of Political Economy_ are plainly and inevitably damaged, as works of art, by the fact that they are written to convey definite lessons. The fetters in which the story moves are necessarily far closer than in the ordinary "novel with a purpose;" for here the object is not merely to show the results, upon particular characters or upon individual careers, of a certain course of conduct, and thence to argue that in similar special circumstances all persons would experience similar consequences: but the task here is to show in operation those springs of the social machinery by which we are _all_, generally quite unconsciously, guided in our _every-day_ actions, the natural laws by which _all_ our lives are _inevitably_ governed. To do this, the author was compelled to select scenes from common life, and to eschew the striking and the unusual. Again, it was absolutely necessary that much of the doctrine which had to be taught must be conveyed by dialogue; not because it would not be possible to exemplify in action every theory of political economy--for all those theories have originally been derived from observation of the facts of human history--but because no such a small group of persons and such a limited space of time as must be taken to _tell a story about_, can possibly display the whole consequences of many of the laws of social science. The results of our daily actions as members of society are not so easily visible as they would be if we could wholly trace them out amongst our own acquaintances or in our own careers. The consequences of our own conduct, good or bad, must _come round_ to us, it is true, but often only as members of the body politic. Thus, they are very often in a form as little distinguishable to the uninstructed mind as we may suppose it would be comprehensible to the brain, if the organs of the body had a separate consciousness, that it was responsible for its own aches arising from the disturbance of the liver consequent upon intemperance. But in a tale it is obviously impossible to show _in action_ any more of the working of events than can be exemplified in one or two groups of persons, all of whom must be, however slightly, personally associated. The larger questions and principles at issue must be expounded and argued out in conversations, or else by means of an entire lapse from the illustrative to the didactic method. Now, as ordinary people do not go about the world holding long conversations or delivering themselves of dissertations on political economy, it is clear that the introduction of such talks and preachments detracts from the excellence of the story as a work of art. Still less artistically admirable does the fiction become when a lesson is introduced as a separate argument intruded into the course of the tale.