The moralist working imaginatively has always had to ask himself
how far he might go in illustration of his thesis, and he has not
hesitated, or if he has hesitated, he has not failed to go far
very far. Defoe went far, Richardson went far, Ibsen has gone
far, Tolstoy has gone far, and if Zola went farther than any of
these, still he did not go so far as the immoralists have gone in
the portrayal of vicious things to allure where he wished to
repel. There is really such a thing as high motive and such a
thing as low motive, though the processes are often so
bewilderingly alike in both cases. The processes may confound
us, but there is no reason why we should be mistaken as to
motive, and as to Zola's motive I do not think M. Chaumie was
mistaken. As to his methods, they by no means always reflected
his intentions. He fancied himself working like a scientist who
has collected a vast number of specimens, and is deducing
principles from them. But the fact is, he was always working
like an artist, seizing every suggestion of experience and
observation, turning it to the utmost account, piecing it out by
his invention, building it up into a structure of fiction where
its origin was lost to all but himself, and often even to
himself.
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