His scientific knowledge was
superficial in nearly every branch. It was his divination which was
great. And divination is not omniscience.
An offshoot from the naturalistic school apparently, but derived more
truly from the _Comedie Humaine_, is that decadent, pornographic art,
of which Balzac would have been ashamed, had he lived to see the
vegetation that grew up from the seeds he had sown without knowing
what they would bring forth. In Zola's novels the plant was already
full grown; its earlier appearance as the slender blade was
Champfleury's vulgar satire, the _Bourgeois de Molinchart_. More
recently the blossom has revealed its pestilential rankness so plainly
that no one can be deceived as to its noxious effect.
Where Balzac's influence is likeliest to remain potent for good is in
the domain of history. He was not altogether an initiator here, having
learnt from Walter Scott in the one as in the other capacity; but he
developed and focussed what he had received; he added to it, and made
it a factor in the historical science. After him historians began to
assign a more important place in their narrations and chronicles to
the manners and interests of the people, patiently seeking to assemble
and situate everything that could relate them exactly to the great
political and other public events which would be nothing but names
without them.
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