There is a second feature of the influences of literature, good literature, on emotional life which may have some special value for our time. In B. M. Spinley's portrayal of the underprivileged and undereducated youth of London, a salient finding was the inability to postpone gratification, a need to satisfy impulses immediately without the pleasure of anticipation or of savoring the experience. Perhaps it is only an analogy, but one of the most obvious differences between cheap fiction and fiction of an enduring quality is the development of a theme or story with leisure and anticipation. Anyone who has watched children develop a taste for literature will understand what I mean. It is at least possible that the capacity to postpone gratification is developed as well as expressed in a continuous and guided exposure to great literature.

In any inquiry into the way in which great literature affects the emotions, particularly with respect to the sense of harmony, or relief of tension, or sense of ``a transformed inner nature'' which may occur, a most careful exploration of the particular feature of the experience which produces the effect would be required. In the calm which follows the reading of a poem, for example, is the effect produced by the enforced quiet, by the musical quality of words and rhythm, by the sentiments or sense of the poem, by the associations with earlier readings, if it is familiar, by the boost to the self-esteem for the semi-literate, by the diversion of attention, by the sense of security in a legitimized withdrawal, by a kind license for some variety of fantasy life regarded as forbidden, or by half conscious ideas about the magical power of words? These are, if the research is done with subtlety and skill, researchable topics, but the research is missing.