The Naturalists object that a plot is an artificial contrivance, because in
“real life” events do not fall into a logical pattern. That claim depends on
the observer’s viewpoint, in the literal sense of the word “viewpoint.” A
nearsighted man standing two feet away from the wall of a house and staring at
it, would declare that the map of the city’s streets is an artificial, invented
contrivance. That is not what an airplane pilot would say, flying two thousand
feet above the city. The events of men’s lives follow the logic of men’s
premises and values—as one can observe if one looks past the range of the
immediate moment, past the trivial irrelevancies, repetitions and routines of
daily living, and sees the essentials, the turning points, the direction of a
man’s life.