436. Perhaps this present problem would be better understood if, for example, we take an analysis of what is called a "novel". A novel is actually the same as a description of life, and hence becomes a kind of analysis. Whether it be a description of fact or fiction in no way alters the principle. In a novel we get a whole range of information about characters, localities and events. It is also the author's intention in the story to give his readers an overall picture of the special happenings or kinds of fate on which the novel is built.
      In the structure of such a novel there is usually a villain, a hero and some subsidiary characters, some of which are associated with the hero and others with the villain. As a rule the story starts at the point where actions between the villain and hero begin, and ends where the hero triumphs over the villain and gains his reward and the villain gets his punishment.
      But is such an analysis mathematical? Is it an overall picture of cosmic reality? Has the hero, from a cosmic point of view, really suffered unjustly and thereby made himself deserving of a reward? And can one be absolutely sure that the punishment or suffering that the villain brought upon himself is the absolute expression of justice? No, definitely not. As will be shown later in "Livets Bog", in cosmic reality no one suffers unjustly and no one acts unjustly. The novel's analysis is thus wrong from beginning to end. It cannot be more than a description of some temporary outward events, brought about by previous causes about which the novel gives no information, just as it ends abruptly with reward for the hero and punishment for the villain without any information as to the after-effects of these happenings.
      But as the events in the novel, constituting an illustration of life, can undeniably only exist as being results of energies previously released, and these events have equally undeniably played a part in the hero's and villain's attitudes towards each other, and furthermore there is no doubt that the hero's reward and the villain's punishment must cause effects which generally are not suitable for creating sympathy or a joyful reunion between the two people, then the novel is certainly not finished.
      It may perhaps be claimed that the villain and his friends or accomplices have all been killed and consequently cannot be any further trouble for the hero. But this only means that the story is to an even greater degree only a fragmentary analysis. It is not in any way an analysis of a complete cycle. To kill the villain is certainly a solution, but it is the simplest of all solutions. It is a solution which could only originate from primitiveness. Such a solution could never under any circumstances arise from true intellectuality. There is another solution, which is Nature's own, and one with which everyone must finally agree and therefore must be the best of all, namely, that the villain and the hero embrace each other in sympathy and love, so that the highest divine contact is concluded and the whole cycle completed. Only when that love and sympathy between villain and hero has outlived itself and a total indifference has become dominant, can a new life-cycle make its beginning. Only at this point is the novel actually finished.