find something new which could attract. The truth itself, in the name
of which it was done, was put in a corner in the presence of such
exigencies. Are you familiar with Zola's "La Terre"? This novel is to
represent a picture of a French village. Try and think of a French
village, or of any other village. How does it look altogether? It is
a gathering of houses, trees, fields, pastures, wild flowers, people,
herds, light, sky, singing, small country business, and work. In all
that, without any doubt, the manure plays an important part, but there
is something more behind it and besides it. But Zola's village looks
as if it was composed exclusively of manure and crime. Therefore
the picture is false, the truth twisted, because in nature the true
relation of things is different. If any one would like to take the
trouble of making a list of the women represented in French novels,
he would persuade himself that at least ninety-five per cent. of
them were fallen women. But in society it is not, and cannot be, so.
Probably even in the countries where they worshipped Astarte, there
were less bad women. Notwithstanding this, the authors try to persuade
us that they are giving a true picture of society, and that their
analysis of customs is an objective one. The lie, exaggeration, liking
for rotten things--such is the exact picture in contemporary novels.
I do not know what profit there is in literature like that, but I
do know that the devil has not lost anything, because through this
channel flows a river of mud and poison, and the moral sense became so
dulled that finally they tolerated such books which a few decades
ago would have brought the author to court. To-day we do not wish to
believe that the author of "Madame Bovary" had two criminal suits. Had
this book been written twenty years later, they would have found it
too modest.

But the human spirit, which does not slumber, and the organism that