Aspects of the Novel

“The scholar, like the philosopher, can contemplate the river of time. He contemplates it not as a whole, but he can see the facts, the personalities, floating past him, and estimate the relations between them, and if his conclusions could be as valuable to us as they are to himself he would long ago have civilized the human race.”

Forster’s definition of a true scholar reflects the challenges inherent in considering time in relation to literature. The comparison of a genuine scholar to a philosopher demonstrates the depth of knowledge necessary to fully consider time’s effects on a work of literature. The final sentence says that such a scholar’s insights would be truly valuable to civilization as a whole, but it hints that no scholar has fully achieved this—in a tongue-in-cheek tone, Forster says that scholars are often more interested in their own insights than other people are since they are not truly able to arrive at this impressive degree of knowledge.

“A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver—in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.”

The metaphor of the mirror is one of several extended metaphors that Forster uses to clarify and concretize his points about the form of the novel. Here, the metaphor shows the value of the novel in contrast to history. Though history is valuable, the novel’s ability to evoke emotion makes it more fundamentally human and powerful.

“The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.”

The reader’s relationship with the novel is a testament to its quality, which emphasizes The Innate Humanity of the Novel.