Perhaps we would all like to love more richly than we do. Many novels are about love- most are, perhaps-and it gives us pleasure to identify with loving characters. They are free, and we are not. But we may not want to admit this; for to do so might make us feel, consciously, that our on loves are inadequate.

Paradoxically, however, a story ceases to be like life on its last page. Life goes on, but the story does not. Its characters have no vitality outside the first page and after the last is only good as the next reader's.

One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it teaches the unconscious.