So Runs the World | Page 9

and short neck, give to his person a rough appearance.
Looking at his face and those wrinkles around the eyes, you can guess
that he is a man who can stand much, that he is persevering and
stubborn, not only in his projects but in the realization of them; but
what is mere important, he is so in his thinking also. There is no
keenness in him. At the first glance of the eye one can see that he is a
doctrinarian shut up in himself, who does not embrace large
horizons--sees everything at a certain angle, narrow-mindedly yet
seeing distinctly.
His mind, like a dark lantern, throws a narrow light in only one
direction, and he goes in that direction with immovable surety. In that
way the history of a series of his books called "Les Rougon-Macquart"
becomes clear.
Zola was determined to write the history of a certain family at the time
of the Empire, on the ground of conditions produced by it, in
consideration of the law of heredity.
There was a question even about something more than this
consideration, because this heredity had to become the physiological
foundation of the work. There is a certain contradiction in the premises.
Speaking historically Rougon-Macquart had to be a picture of French
society during its last times. According to their moral manifestations of
life, therefore, they ought to be of themselves more or less a normal
family. But in such a case what shall one do with heredity? To be sure,

moral families are such on the strength of the law of heredity--but it is
impossible to show it in such conditions--one can do it only in
exceptional cases of the normal type. Therefore the Rougon are in fact
a sick family. They are children of nervousness. It was contracted by
the first mother of the family, and since that time the coming
generations, one after another, followed with the same stigma on their
foreheads. This is the way the author wishes to have it, and one must
agree with him. In what way, however, can a history of one family
exceptionally attainted with a mental disorder be at the same time a
picture of French society, the author does not explain to us. Had he said
that during the Empire all society was sick, it would be a trick. A
society can walk in the perilous road of politics or customs and be sick
as a community, and at the same time have healthy individuals and
families. These are two different things. Therefore one of the two:
either the Rougon are sick, and in that case the cycle of novels about
them is not a picture of French society during the Empire--it is only a
psychological study--or the whole physiological foundations, all this
heredity on which the cycle is based, in a word Zola's whole doctrine,
is nonsense.
I do not know whether any one has paid attention to Zola at this aut aut!
It is sure that he never thought of it himself. Probably it would not have
had any influence, as the criticisms had no influence on his theory of
heredity. Critics and physiologists attacked him ofttimes with an
arsenal of irrefutable arguments. It did not do any good. They affirmed
in vain that the theory of heredity is not proved by any science, and
above all it is difficult to grasp it and show it by facts; they pointed in
vain that physiology cannot be fantastical and its laws cannot depend
on the free conception of an author. Zola listened, continued to write,
and in the last volume he gave a genealogical tree of the family of
Rougon-Macquart, with such a serenity as if no one ever doubted his
theory.
At any rate, this tree has one advantage. It is so pretentious, so
ridiculous that it takes away from the theory the seriousness which it
would have given to less individual minds. We learn from it that from a
nervously sick great-grandmother grows a sick family. But the one who

would think that her nervousness is seen in descendants as it is in the
physical field, in a certain similar way, in some inclination or passion
for something, will be greatly mistaken. On the contrary, the
marvellous tree produces different kinds of fruit. You can find on it red
apples, pears, plums, cherries, and everything you might desire. And all
that on account of great-grandmother's nervousness. Is it the same way
in nature? We do not know. Zola himself does not have any other
proofs than clippings from newspapers, describing different crimes; he
preserved these clippings carefully as "human documents," and which
he uses according to his fancy.
It can be granted to him, but he must not sell us such fancy for the
eternal and immutable