[Nearly] all novels, including De Waterman, appeal to beliefs in that they merely suggest or hint at the motives and causes which underlie certain acts performed by the characters. Of course, the novelist may deliberately try to make the behaviour of his characters incomprehensible, but this is done, I think, only in a minority of cases.

One prominent example in De Waterman is the behaviour of the grown-up people in Gorkum towards the boy Maarten. Apparently there is here some connection between religion, parochialism, and severity in education; a connection which is indeed not altogether out of the common. On the basis of his beliefs as to human psychology the reader should be able to gather that such a connection exists: the author does not explicitly tell him so.

Maarten's reactions also, especially his rebelliousness, his feeling of guilt, his urge to self-destruction, and his role (in Northrop Frye's terminology) as a 'pharmakos in reverse' [Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism, 1951] are largely understandable as a possible effect of his education. His father's saying to him 'That boy no longer belongs here', together with many other things done to him may have affected Maarten's psyche to the end of his life. This is hardly ever explicitly indicated but for the greater part implicitly given to understand. That is to say that beliefs as to psychological mechanisms are appealed to. The intricate pattern of psychological connections can only be confidently conjectured on the basis of such beliefs. Of course, I do not want to suggest that Maarten's grown-up life is completely rectilinear. There are some influential contingencies, such as his love for a Roman Catholic girl, his meeting with Koppers and Wuddink, the death of his child. But again, beliefs held in real life are bound to play a role in the acceptance of the after-effects of these contingencies.

Nor is Maarten the only main character whose behaviour and development must be regarded in the light of certain psychological views, vague and indefinite though they may be. The same applies to Aunt Jans (Juffrouw Goedeke). The reader is invited to largely accept her own account of her life at the end of chapter 12. This would mean that he has to believe that her psychological state of mind in her latter days is after all a natural (though not in the least a predictable) outcome of her life experience. Moreover, and more importantly, to understand and appreciate her story the reader should know something about the way people see themselves and their own life in retrospect (and this involves memory, the sentiment of 'lost time' and lost opportunities, etc.). The story of Juffrouw Goedeke also appeals to the belief that there is a rather general human striving after social respectability and honour and power; without such a belief Maarten's behaviour cannot be seen as in any way deviating.

Many of the psychological beliefs relevant to a proper understanding of De Waterman are in the category of what [Henry David] Aiken calls 'cultural beliefs' in so far as they are somehow connected with the scientific commitments of a particular culture or age. The relevant beliefs with respect to the natural world, however, are mostly 'natural beliefs' [in M. C. Beardsley and H. M. Schuller, eds., Aesthetic Inquiry: Essays on Art Criticism and the Philosophy of Art, 1967]. But this need not always be so. The physical knowledge appealed to can be of a much more sophisticated type than in De Waterman.

Lastly, I should like to point out that the deeply melancholy, even tragic character of the novel is based on certain general notions which are part of a (perhaps only incompletely articulated) world view.

Apparently the novel appeals to feelings of sympathy towards Maarten. More especially, the reader is expected to recognize Maarten's attitude and abilities as things which ask for benevolent attention to begin with (which of course does not quite exclude the possibility of moral censure). It is presupposed that Maarten is, in many senses, a gifted boy whose whole life—difficult, wayward, and in the end unhappy—is presented from this basic perspective.

The above would imply that the reader is expected to have more or less definite beliefs with respect to the moral value of certain acts, attitudes, abilities and feelings. Moreover, he should view life as irrevocable and definitive; he should agree that acts and experiences cannot be undone. Ideas such as these emotionally colour the thoughts and remarks of the characters as to what might have been different, if certain things had not happened. These obstacles, however, could not possibly be removed, so the characters think; and the reader is invited to think so, too.