So Runs the World | Page 9

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 laws of nature. Grandmother did have nervousness, her nearest friends were in the habit of searching for remedies against ills not in a drug-store, therefore her male and female descendants are such as they must be--namely, criminals, thieves, fast women, honest people, saints, politicians, good mothers, bankers, farmers, murderers, priests, soldiers, ministers--in a word, everything which in the sphere of the mind, in the sphere of health, in the sphere of wealth and position, in the sphere