Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ACTOR AND PREACHER I. Actor Our main purpose is, as we have said, to follow out the various developments of Stevenson's nature, working outward from physical to spiritual. But there are some other matters which must first be considered. One of the most important of these emerges directly out of that interest in himself which we have found to be so strongly marked a feature of his character. It is obvious that a personality at once so vivid and so interesting to himself and others might easily run off into acting, and this is a view which has been taken by some critics. It has, not unnaturally, been supposed that he did his writing and even his thinking, for effect and with an eye on the audience. In regard to religion this becomes a serious accusation. If the religious side of Stevenson should turn out to be mere posturing, and not in any sense a part of his real self, then the less said or written about it the better. And, in fact, this charge demands all the more serious examination because there was one side of his character, which it is very easy so to misunderstand and exaggerate, as to leave the whole religious life and work valueless because unreal. Of his prayers in Vailima we have already written, of his intercourse with missionaries and their work we shall write in a future page. No doubt such situations offered him apicturesque attitude, such as he dearly loved from first to last. Yet, though they may reveal the complexity of his nature and his love of picturesqueness in all things, they bear the very hall-mark of sincerity upon them. But before we come to these more serious questions, let us glance at the theatrical element in his general taste and disposition. That there was such an element need not be denied. Nothing is more evident than the fre... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.