Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/23

Rh idealism; it must be an attempt to clothe human beings like ourselves, with certain attributes that make them as our imagination delights to picture them, but as no one ever saw them in reality. The light literature of England has long since ceased to be a faithful mirror of real life. When it is not describing with gusto, crimes and scandals of all kinds, murders, burglaries, seductions or testamentary frauds, it portrays a model society, in which the members of the nobility are all handsome, dignified, cultivated and wealthy; while the lower classes are honest God-fearing people, devoted to their superiors, the virtuous among them being graciously praised and rewarded by Sir This or Sir That, while the wicked are locked up by the police—in short, a society which is in all respects an absurd idealization of the dilapidated, tottering structure of society as it exists in England at the present day.

The literature of France does not seem to fit into this frame at the first glance; but a second convinces us of our error. It is true, it limits its field of observation to the present and real in life. It denies itself any suggestions or longings for the past or the future, for any better or any different ideal. It is founded upon a principle of Art, that is called Realism or Naturalism. But let us examine closer: is Naturalism a proof of satisfaction with the present, and in this sense, in opposition to the pseudo historical and fanciful idealization which I have just described to be a powerful manifestation of disgust with the actualities of life, and of longing for their improvement? What are the themes which Naturalism portrays with a partiality for which it has been reproached so often? Does it ever depict any lovely or pleasing phases of this mortal life? No. It describes exclusively the most loathsome and hideous traits of civilization, such as are found