The experimental novel, and other essays

Front matter

M. L.

Z74e

Zola 1806919 Experimental novel, and other essays

Introduction

Five of these articles first appeared, translated into Russian, in the Messager de VEurope^ a St. Petersburg review. The two others, entitled “The Novel” and “ Criticism,” are but the gathering together of articles selected from a large number published in Le Bien Public and Le Voltaire,

Allow me to publicly express my gratitude to the great nation which welcomed me so warmly, and adopted me, at a time when not a journal in Paris would accept what I wrote and everyone was my enemy in my literary battle. Russia, in one of my hours of pain and discouragement, revived my faith in myself, renewed my strength, and gave me a public, and that the most critical and impassioned of publics. Her criticism of my writings made me what I am to-day. I cannot speak of her without emotion, and I shall keep her in eternal remembrance.

They are therefore polemics, manifestoes, if you will, written in the first flush of the idea, without any rhetorical subtilities. As they were to be trans¬ lated into another tongue, I paid little attention to their literary form. My first intention was to rewrite them before publishing them in France. But on reading them over I realized that it would be better to leave them as they were, with their faults and the

VI

INIRODUCTION, outlines of their rather angular style, lest I should make the mistake of disfiguring them. I send them forth, then, as they have returned to me, encumbered with repetitions, loose in construction, with too much simplicity in their style, too much dryness in their reasoning. Doubts assail me,*^and I ask myself. Is it possible that these articles will be found to be my best work? For I am overcome with shame when I think of the enormous pile of romantic rhetoric which lies behind me.

Emile Zola.

Contents

PAGB

The Experimental Novel, ..... i A Letter to the Young People of France, . . 57

The Influence of Money in Literature, . . 161

II

But see what splendid clearness breaks forth when this conception of the application of the experimental method to the novel is adequately grasped and is car¬ ried out with all the scientific rigor which the matter permits to-day. A contemptible reproach which they heap upon us naturalistic writers is the desire to be solely photographers. We have in vain declared that we admit the necessity of an artist’s possessing an individual temperament and a personal expression; they continue to reply to us with these imbecile arguments, about the impossibility of being strictly true, about the necessity of arranging facts to produce a work of art of any kind. Well, with the application of the experi¬ mental method to the novel that quarrel dies out. The idea of experiment carries with it the idea of modification. We start, indeed, from the true facts, which are our indestructible basis ; but to show the mechanism of these facts it is necessary for us to pro¬ duce and direct the phenomena ; this is our share of invention, here is the genius in the book. Thus without having recourse to the questions of form and of style, which I shall examine later, I maintain even at this point that we must modify nature, without departing from nature, when we employ the experi¬ mental method in our novels. If we bear in mind this definition, that “ observation indicates and experiment teaches,” we can even now claim for our books this great lesson of experiment.

The writer’s office, far from being lessened, grows singularly from this point of view. An experiment, even the most simple, is always based on an idea, itself born of an observation. As Claude Bernard says: “ The experimental idea is not arbitrary, nor purely

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

imaginary ; it ought always to have a support in some observed reality, that is to say, in nature/’ It is on this idea and on doubt that he bases all the method. ‘^The appearance of the experimental idea,” he says further on, is entirely spontaneous and its nature absolutely individual, depending upon the mind in which it originates ; it is a particular sentiment, a quid proprium, which constitutes the originality, the inven¬ tion, and the genius of each one.” Further, he makes doubt the great scientific lever. ** The doubter is the true savant ; he doubts only himself and his interpre¬ tations ; he believes in science ; he even admits in the experimental sciences a criterion or a positive principle, the determinism of phenomena, which is absolute in living beings as in inanimate bodies.”* Thus, instead of confining the novelist within narrow bounds, the exper¬ imental method gives full sway to his intelligence as a thinker, and to his genius as a creator. He must see, understand, and invent. Some observed fact makes the idea start up of trying an experiment, of writing a novel, in order to attain to a complete knowl¬ edge of the truth. Then when, after careful considera¬ tion, he has decided upon the plan of his experiment, he will judge the results at each step with the freedom of mind of a man who accepts only facts conformable to the determinism of phenomena. He set out from doubt to reach positive knowledge ; and he will not cease to doubt until the mechanism of the passion, taken to pieces and set up again by him, acts according to the fixed laws of nature. There is no greater, no more magnificent work for the human mind. We shall see, further on, the miseries of the scholastics, of the makers of systems, and those theorizing about the

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

ideal) compared with the triumph of the experimen¬ talists.

I sum up this first part by repeating that the natural¬ istic novelists observe and experiment, and that all their work is the offspring of the doubt which seizes them in the presence of truths little known and phe¬ nomena unexplained, until an experimental idea rudely awakens their genius some day, and urges them to make an experiment, to analyze facts, and to master

them.

II.

SUCH, then, is the experimental method. But for a long time it has been held that this method can¬ not be applied to living beings. This is the important point in the question that I am going to examine with Claude Bernard. The reasoning subsequently will be of the simplest ; if the experimental method can be carried from chemistry and physics into physiology and medicine, it can be also carried from physiology into the naturalistic novel.

Cuvier — to cite the name of only one scientific man — pretended that experiment as applied to inanimate bodies could not be used with living beings ; physiol¬ ogy, according to his way of thinking, should be purely a science of observation and of anatomical deduction. The vitalists even admit a vital force in unceasing battle with the physical and chemical forces neutraliz¬ ing their action. Claude Bernard, on the contrary, denies all presence of a mysterious force, and affirms that experiment is applicable everywhere. “ I pro¬ pose,” he says, ** to establish the fact that the science of the phenomena of life can have no other basis than the science of the phenomena of inanimate bodies, and that there are, in this connection, no differences between the principles of biological science and those of physics and chemistry. In fact, the end the experimental method proposes is the same everywhere ; it consists in connecting, by experiment, the natural phenomena

*4

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

to their conditions of existence or to their nearest causes.”

It seems to me useless to enter into the complicated explanations and reasonings of Claude Bernard. I have already said that he insists upon the existence of an interior condition in living beings. “ In experi¬ menting on inanimate bodies,” he says, ‘‘ there is only one condition to be considered, that is, the exterior earthly condition ; while among the higher living organisms there are at least two conditions to consider: the exterior condition or extra-organic, and the interior or inter-organic. The complexity due to the existence of an interior organic condition is the only reason for the great difficulties which we encounter in the experi¬ mental determination of living phenomena, and in the application of the means capable of modifying them.” And he starts out from this fact to establish the prin¬ ciple that there are fixed laws governing the physiolog¬ ical elements plunged into an interior condition, as there are fixed laws for governing the chemical elements which are steeped in an exterior condition. Hence, you can experiment on a living being as well as on an inanimate one ; it is only a question of putting your¬ self in the desired conditions.

I insist upon this, because, I repeat once more, the important point of the question is there. Claude Bernard, in speaking of the vitalists, writes thus:

They consider life as a mysterious and supernatural agent, which acts arbitrarily, free from all determinism, and they condemn as materialists all those who endeavor to trace vital phenomena to definite organic and physico-chemical conditions. These are false ideas, which it is not easy to root out once they have become domiciled in the mind ; only the progress of science can dissipate them.” And he lays down this axiom : “ With living beings as well as inanimate, the condi¬ tions of the existence of each phenomenon are deter¬ mined in an absolute manner.”

I restrain myself for fear of complicating the argument to too great an extent.

Thus you see the progress which science has made. In the last century a more exact application of the experimental method creates physics and chemistry, which then are freed from the irrational and super¬ natural. Men discover that there are fixed laws, thanks to analysis, and make themselves masters of phenomena. Then a new point is gained. Living beings, in which the vitalists still admitted a mysterious influence, are in their turn brought under and reduced to the general mechanism of matter. Science proves that the existing conditions of all phenomena are the same in living beings as in inanimate ; and from that tim6 on physiology assumes little by little the certainty of chemistry and medicine. But are we going to stop there? Evidently not. When it has been proved that the body of man is a machine, whose machinery can be taken apart and put together again at the will of the experimenter, then we can pass to the passion¬ ate and intellectual acts of man. Then we shall enter into the domain which up to the present has belonged to physiology and literature ; it will be the decisive conquest by science of the hypotheses of philosophers and writers. We have experimental chemistry and medicine ; we shall have an experimental physiology, and later on an experimental novel. It is an inevitable evolution, the goal of which it is easy to see to-day.

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

All things hang together ; it is necessary to start from the determinism of inanimate bodies in order to arrive at the determinism of living beings ; and since savants like Claude Bernard demonstrate now that fixed laws govern the human body, we can easily proclaim, with¬ out fear of being mistaken, the hour in which the laws of thought and passion will be formulated in their turn. A like determinism will govern the stones of the roadway and the brain of man.

This opinion is to be found in LTntroduction.” I cannot repeat too often that I take all my arguments from Claude Bernard’s work. After having explained that any completely special phenomena may be the result of the more and more complex combination and co-operation of the organized elements, he writes the following : “ I am persuaded that the obstacles which surround the experimental study of psychological phenomena are in great measure due to difficulties of this order ; for notwithstanding the marvelous nature and the delicacy of their manifestations, it is impos¬ sible, so it seems to me, not to bring cerebral phenom¬ ena, like all the phenomena of living bodies, under the laws of a scientific determinism.” This is clear. Later, without doubt, science will find this deter¬ minism for all the cerebral and sensory manifestations of man.

Now, science enters into the domain of us novelists, who are to-day the analyzers of man, in his individual and social relations. We are continuing, by our observations and experiments, the work of the physiol¬ ogist, who has continued that of the physicist and the chemist. We are making use, in a certain way, of scientific psychology to complete scientific physiology ;

and to finish the series we have only to bring into our studies of nature and man the decisive tool of the experimental method. In one word, we should operate on the characters, the passions, on the human and social data, in the same way that the chemist and the physicist operate on inanimate beings, and as the physiologist operates on living beings. Determinism dominates everything. It is scientific inve'stigation, it is experimental reasoning, which combats one by one the hypotheses of the idealists, and which replaces purely imaginary novels by novels of observation and experiment.

I certainly do not intend at this point to formulate laws. In the actual condition of the science of man the obscurity and confusion are still too great to risk the slightest synthesis. All that can be said is that there is an absolute determinism for all human phe¬ nomena. From that on investigation is a duty. We have the method ; we should go forward, even if a whole lifetime of effort ends but in the conquest of a small particle of the truth. Look at physiology: Claude Bernard made grand discoveries, and he died protesting that he knew nothing, or nearly nothing. In each page he confesses the difficulties of his task.

In the phenomenal relations,” he says, “ such as nature offers them to us, there always reigns a complexity more or less great. In this respect the complexity of mineral phenomena is much less great than that of living phenomena ; this is why the sciences restricted to inanimate bodies have been able to formulate them¬ selves more quickly. In living beings the phenomena are of enormous complexity, and the greater mobility of living organisms renders them more difficult to

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

grasp and to define.” What can be said, then, of the difficulties to be encountered by the experimental novel, which adds to physiology its studies upon the most delicate and complex organs, which deals with the highest manifestations of man as an individual and a social member? Evidently analysis becomes more complicated here. Therefore, if the physiologist is but drawing up his principles to-day, it is natural that the experimental novelist should be only taking his first steps : We foresee it as a sure consequence of the scientific evolution of the century ; but it is impossible to base it on certain laws. Since Claude Bernard speaks of “ the restricted and precarious truths of biological science,” we can freely admit that the truths of the science of man, from the standpoint of his intel¬ lectual and passionate mechanism, are more restricted and precarious still. We are lisping yet, we are the last comers, but that should be only one incentive the more to push us forward to more exact studies ; now that we possess the tool, the experimental method, our goal is very plain — to know the determinism of phenomena and to make ourselves master of these phenomena.

Without daring, as I say, to formulate laws, I con¬ sider that the question of heredity has a great influence in the intellectual and passionate manifestations of man. I also attach considerable importance to the surround¬ ings. I ought to touch upon Darwin’s theories ; but this is only a general study of the experimental method as applied to the novel, and I should lose myself were I to enter into details. I will only say a word on the subject of surroundings. We have just seen the great importance given by Claude Bernard to

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

the study of those inter-organic conditions which must be taken into account if we wish to find the deter¬ minism of phenomena in living beings. Well, then ! in the study of a family, of a group of living beings, I think that the social condition is of equal importance. Some day the physiologist will explain to us the mechanism of the thoughts and the passions ; we shall know how the individual machinery of each man works; how 4ie thinks, how he loves, how he goes front reason to passion and folly ; but these phenom¬ ena, resulting as they do from the mechanism of the organs, acting under the influence of an interior condi¬ tion, are not produced in isolation or in the bare void. Man is not alone ; he lives in society, in a social condi¬ tion ; and consequently, for us novelists, this social condition unceasingly modifies the phenomena. In¬ deed our great study is just there, in the reciprocal effect of society on the individual and the individual on society. For the physiologist, the exterior and interior conditions are purely chemical and physical, and this aids him in finding the laws which govern them easily. We are not yet able to prove that the social condition is also physical and chemical. It is that certainly, or rather it is the variable product of a group of living beings, who themselves are absolutely submissive to the physical and chemical laws which govern alike living beings and inanimate. From this we shall see that we can act upon the social conditions, in acting upon the phenomena of which we have made ourselves master in man. And this is what constitutes the experimental novel : to possess a knowledge of the mechanism of the phenomena inherent in man, to show the machinery of his intellectual and sensory

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

manifestations, under the influences of heredity and environment, such as physiology shall give them to us, and then finally to exhibit man living in social condi¬ tions produced by himself, which he modifies daily, and in the heart of which he himself experiences a continual transformation. Thus, then, we lean on physiology ; we take man from the hands of the physiologist solely, in order to continue the solution of the problem, and to solve scientifically the question of how men behave when they are in society.

These general ideas will be sufficient to guide us to-day. Later on, when science is farther advanced, when the experimental novel has brought forth decisive results, some critic will explain more precisely what I have but indicated to-day.

Elsewhere Claude Bernard confesses how difficult it is to apply the experimental method to living beings. ‘‘ The living body,’' he says, ‘‘ especially among the higher animals, never falls into chemical or physical indifference with the exterior conditions ; it possesses an incessant movement, an organic evolution appar¬ ently spontaneous and constant ; and notwithstanding the fact that this evolution has need of exterior circum¬ stances to manifest itself, it is, however, independent in its course and movement.” And he concludes as I have : In short, it is only in the physical and chem¬ ical conditions of the interior that we shall find the principle that governs the exterior phenomena of life.” But whatever complexities may present themselves, and even when extraordinary phenomena are produced, the application of the experimental method is impera¬ tive. If the phenomena of life have a complexity and an apparent difference from those of inanimate bodies,

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

they do not offer this difference, except by reason of determined or determinable conditions which belong to them. Therefore, even should the sciences dealing with life differ from the others in their application and in their special laws, they are not to be distinguished by their scientific method.”

I must say one word as to the limits which Claude Bernard assigns to science. According to him we shall always be ignorant of the “ why ” of things ; we can only know the “ how.” It is this that he expresses in the following terms : “ The nature of our minds urges us to seek the essence or the ‘ why ’ of things. In this we see further than the goal it has been given us to attain to ; for experiment soon teaches us that we must not go beyond the ‘ how ’ ; that is to say, beyond the nearest cause or the condition of the existence of any phenomenon.” Further on he gives this example : “If we can discover ‘ why ’ opium and its alkaloids pro¬ duce sleep, we shall know the mechanism of such slumber, and know ‘ how ' opium or its essence produces sleep ; for slumber only takes place because the active substance is about to put itself in contact with certain organic elements which it modifies.” The practical conclusion of all this is the following : “ Science has precisely the privilege of teaching us what we are igno¬ rant of, through its substitution of reason and experi¬ ment for sentiment, and by showing us clearly the limit of our actual knowledge. But, by a marvelous compen¬ sation, in proportion as science humbles our pride, it strengthens our power.” All these considerations are strictly applicable to the experimental novel. In order not to lose itself in philosophical speculations, in order to replace idealistic hypothesis by a slow conquest of the unknown, it must continue the search after the how ” of things. This is its exact role, and it is from this that it must draw, as we are going to see, its reason for being and its moral.

I have reached this point : the experimental novel is a consequence of the scientific evolution of the cen¬ tury ; it continues and completes physiology, which itself leans for support on chemistry and medicine ; it substitutes for the study of the abstract and the meta¬ physical man the study of the natural man, governed by physical and chemical laws, and modified by the influences of his surroundings ; it is in one word the literature of our scientific age, as the classical and romantic literature corresponded to a scholastic and theological age. Now I will pass to the great question of the application of all this, and of its justification.

III

The object of the experimental method in physiol¬ ogy and in medicine is to study phenomena in order to become their master. Claude Bernard in each page of “ Llntroduction comes back to this idea. He declares : “ All natural philosophy is summed up in this: To know the laws which govern phenomena. The experimental problem reduces itself to this : To foresee and direct phenomena.” Farther on he gives an example : “It will not satisfy the experimental doctor, though it may the merely empirical one, to know that quinine cures fever ; the essential thing is to know what fever is, and to understand the mechanism by which quinine cures. All this is of the greatest importance to the experimental doctor; for as soon as he knows it positively, the fact that quinine cures fever will no longer be an isolated and empirical fact, but a scientific fact. This fact will be connected then with the conditions which bind it to other phenomena, and we shall be thus led to the knowledge of the laws of the organism, and to the possibility of regulating their manifestations.” A striking example can be quoted in the case of scabies. “ To-day the cause of this disease is known and determined experimentally ; the whole subject has become scientific, and empiricism has disappeared. A cure is surely and without excep¬ tion effected when you place yourself in the conditions known by experiment to produce this end.”

This, then, is the end, this is the purpose in physiol¬ ogy and in experimental medicine : to make one’s self master of life in order to be able to direct it. Let us suppose that science advances and that the conquest of the unknown is finally completed ; the scientific age which Claude Bernard saw in his dreams will then be realized. When that time comes the doctor will be the master of maladies ; he will cure without fail ; his influence upon the human body will conduce to the welfare and strength of the species. We shall enter upon a century in which man, grown more powerful, will make use of nature and will utilize its laws to pro¬ duce upon the earth the greatest possible amount of justice and freedom. There is no nobler, higher, nor grander end. Here is our role as intelligent beings: to penetrate to the wherefore of things, to become superior to these things, and to reduce them to a con¬ dition of subservient machinery.

‘Well, this dream of the physiologist and the experi¬ mental doctor is also that of the novelist, who employs the experimental method in his study of man as a simple individual and as a social animal. Their object is ours ; we also desire to master certain phe¬ nomena of an intellectual and personal order, to be able to direct them. We are, in a word, experimental moralists, showing by experiment in what way a pas¬ sion acts in a certain social condition. The day in which we gain control of the mechanism of this passion we can treat it and reduce it, or at least make it as inoffensive as possible. And in this consists the prac¬ tical utility and high morality of our naturalistic works, which experiment on man, and which dissect piece by piece this human machinery in order to set it going

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

through the influence of the environment. When things have advanced further, when we are in posses¬ sion of the different laws, it will only be necessary to work upon the individuals and the surroundings if we wish to find the best social condition. In this way we shall construct a practical sociology, and our work will be a help to political and economical sciences. I do not know, I repeat, of a more noble wofk, nor of a grander application. To be the master of good and evil, to regulate life, to regulate society, to solve in time all the problems of socialism, above all, to give justice a solid foundation by solving through experi¬ ment the questions of criminality — is not this being the most useful and the most moral workers in the human workshop ?

Let us compare, for one instant, the work of the idealistic novelists to ours ; and here this word idealis¬ tic refers to writers who cast aside observation and experiment, and base their works on the supernatural and the irrational, who admit, in a word, the power of mysterious forces outside of the determinism of the phenomena. Claude Bernard shall reply to this for me: What distinguishes experimental reasoning from scholastic is the fecundity of the one and the sterility of the other. It is precisely the scholastic, who believes he has absolute certitude, who attains to no results. This is easily understood, since by his belief in an abso¬ lute principle he puts himself outside of nature, in which everything is relative. It is, on the contrary, the experimenter, who is always in doubt, who does not think he possesses absolute certainty about anything, who succeeds in mastering the phenomena which sur¬ round him, and in increasing his power over nature.” By

THE EXPERIMENTAL NO PEL.

and by I shall return to this question of the ideal, which is in truth but the question of indeterminism. Claude Bernard says truly : The intellectual conquest of man consists in diminishing and driving back inde¬ terminism, and so, gradually, by the aid of the experi¬ mental m.ethod, gaining ground for determinism.” We experimental novelists have the same task ; our work is to go from the known to the unknown, to make our¬ selves masters of nature ; while the idealistic novelists deliberately remain in the unknown, through all sorts of religious and philosophical prejudices, under the astounding pretense that the unknown is nobler and more beautiful than the known. If our work, often cruel, if our terrible pictures needed justification, I should find, indeed, with Claude Bernard this argument conclusive: “You will never reach really fruitful and luminous generalizations on the phenomena of life until you have experimented yourself and stirred up in the hospital,' the amphitheater, and the laboratory the fetid or palpitating sources of life. If it were necessary for me to give a comparison which would explain my sentiments on the science of life, I should say that it is a superb salon, flooded with light, which you can only reach by passing through a long and nauseating kitchen.”

I insist upon the word which I have employed, that of experimental novelists as applied to naturalistic novelists. One page of “ LTntroduction ” struck me as being very forcible, that in which the author speaks of the vital “ circulus.” “ The muscular and nervous organs preserve the activity of the organs which make the blood ; but the blood, in its turn, nourishes the organs which produce it. There is in this a social or

THE EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL.

organic solidarity, which keeps up a perpetual move¬ ment, until the derangement or cessation of the action of a necessary and vital element has broken the equi¬ librium or brought about some trouble or stoppage in the play of the animal machinery. The problem of the experimentalist doctor consists in finding the cause of any organic disarrangement, that is to say, in seizing the initial phenomenon. We shall see how^ a disloca¬ tion of the organism, or a disarrangement the most complex in appearance, can be traced to a simple initial cause, which calls forth immediately the most complex effects.” All that is necessary here is to change the words experimental doctor to experimental novelist, and this passage is exactly applicable to our natural¬ istic literature. The social circulus is identical with the vital circulus ; in society, as in human beings, a solidar¬ ity exists which unites the different members and the different organisms in such a way that if one organ becomes rotten many others are tainted and a very complicated disease results. Hence, in our novels, when we experiment on a dangerous wound which poisons society, we proceed in the same way as the experimentalist doctor; we try to find the simple initial cause in order to reach the complex causes of which the action is the result. Go back once more to the example of Baron Hulot in “ Cousine Bette.” See the final result, the denouement of the novel : an entire family is destroyed, all sorts of secondary dramas are produced, under the action of Hulof s amorous tem¬ perament. It is there, in this temperament, that the initial cause is found. One member, Hulot^ becomes rotten, and immediately all around him are tainted, the social circulus is interrupted, the health of that society is compromised. What emphasis Balzac lays on the character of Baron Hulot ; with what scrupulous care he analyzes him ! The experiment deals with him chiefly, because its object is to master the symptoms of this passion in order to govern it. Suppose that Hulot is cured, or at least restrained and rendered inoffensive, immediately the drama ceases to have any longer any raison d'itre ; the equilibrium, or more truly the health, of the social body is again established. Thus the naturalistic novelists are really experimental mor¬ alists.