Heart and Science

Heart and Science, by Wilkie
Collins

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Title: Heart and Science A Story of the Present Time
Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7892] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 31, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART
AND SCIENCE ***

Produced by James Rusk

HEART AND SCIENCE
by Wilkie Collins
Heart and Science: A Story of the Present Time
TO
SARONY
(OF NEW YORK)
ARTIST; PHOTOGRAPHER,
AND
GOOD FRIEND
PREFACE
TO READERS IN GENERAL

I.
You are the children of Old Mother England, on both sides of the
Atlantic; you form the majority of buyers and borrowers of novels; and
you judge of works of fiction by certain inbred preferences, which but
slightly influence the other great public of readers on the continent of
Europe.
The two qualities in fiction which hold the highest rank in your
estimation are: Character and Humour. Incident and dramatic situation
only occupy the second place in your favour. A novel that tells no story,
or that blunders perpetually in trying to tell a story--a novel so entirely
devoid of all sense of the dramatic side of human life, that not even a
theatrical thief can find anything in it to steal--will nevertheless be a
work that wins (and keeps) your admiration, if it has Humour which
dwells on your memory, and characters which enlarge the circle of your
friends.
I have myself always tried to combine the different merits of a good
novel, in one and the same work; and I have never succeeded in
keeping an equal balance. In the present story you will find the scales
inclining, on the whole, in favour of character and Humour. This has
not happened accidentally.
Advancing years, and health that stands sadly in need of improvement,
warn me--if I am to vary my way of work--that I may have little time to
lose. Without waiting for future opportunities, I have kept your
standard of merit more constantly before my mind, in writing this book,
than on some former occasions.
Still persisting in telling you a story--still refusing to get up in the
pulpit and preach, or to invade the platform and lecture, or to take you
by the buttonhole in confidence and make fun of my Art--it has been
my chief effort to draw the characters with a vigour and breadth of
treatment, derived from the nearest and truest view that I could get of
the one model, Nature. Whether I shall at once succeed in adding to the
circle of your friends in the world of fiction--or whether you will hurry
through the narrative, and only discover on a later reading that it is the

characters which have interested you in the story--remains to be seen.
Either way, your sympathy will find me grateful; for, either way, my
motive has been to please you.
During its periodical publication correspondents, noting certain
passages in "Heart and Science," inquired how I came to think of
writing this book. The question may be readily answered in better
words than mine. My book has been written in harmony with opinions
which have an indisputable claim to respect. Let them speak for
themselves.
SHAKESPEARE'S OPINION.--"It was always yet the trick of our
English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common."
(King Henry IV., Part II.)
WALTER SCOTT'S OPINION--"I am no great believer in the extreme
degree of improvement to be derived from the advancement of Science;
for every study of that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent, to
harden the heart." (Letter to Miss Edgeworth.)
FARADAY'S OPINION.--"The education of the judgment has for its
first and its last step--Humility." (Lecture on Mental Education, at the
Royal Institution.)
Having given