to help the heart of man to know itself

The phrase “to help the heart of man to know itself” names the inward purpose Mark Yelland sees in Nathan Oliver’s fiction. It also frames Yelland’s effort to explain why Oliver’s work matters to him, even as the two men disagree sharply about the use of animals in research.

Meaning and Attribution

Yelland recalls Henry James’s account of what a novel can do: help the human heart understand itself. He qualifies the idea as potentially pretentious and calls it a kind of sophistry, but concedes that it contains truth. The qualification matters: he does not present fiction as a simple source of moral answers, but as a means of examining human motives and experience.

Place in Yelland’s Dispute with Oliver

Yelland says Oliver is the only modern novelist he reads, in part because he has little time for recreational reading and in part because reading Oliver does not feel wasted. He admires the novelist’s dedication to his craft and believes his books avoid trivialities. After their argument, Yelland wanted Oliver to understand something of his position, while also wanting to warn him not to interfere again with the laboratory or its staff.

The phrase thus sits beside, rather than resolves, their ethical conflict. Yelland argues that the deaths of five carefully treated primates might help relieve or cure diseases causing immense suffering. His appeal to fiction’s capacity for self-knowledge accompanies a defense of weighing suffering, while Oliver’s response rejects concern for the suffering of others. The ideal of understanding the human heart becomes an unsettled measure of their disagreement, not proof that either man has persuaded the other.