Space does not permit us to extend this outline. Under the Third Republic other social laws have been passed and put into effect, such as the laws relative to conciliation and arbitration, to the registration of laborers and employees and to other regulations. It is enough for us to give the terms of the principal of these laws in order to indicate their character. Certainly many of these laws are essential and their usefulness cannot be disputed. But on the slippery ground of social legislation there is a tendency, with the aid of political rivalry, toward interventionism without limit. Those who worked at the beginning to draft these laws and have them adopted, and even the Chambers that voted for them, in the great majority of cases did not intend to bring about thus such a radical transformation of society, the modern bases of which, established by the French revolution, are: the freedom of labor and the responsibility implied in the principles of equality before the law and the freedom of individual property.

At the same time, as, little by little, one regulation leads to another when one passes the limits beyond which the beneficial action of the freedom of labor is no longer clear, a tendency too often exists to diminish the responsibility of individuals by imposing upon them the guardianship of the State.

That was Bismark's conception when he advocated the development of the social laws in Germany. In France our socialists in the government, developed from the platform socialists, have played too much with fire in endeavoring to gain their objects. The revolutionary socialists have profited by this situation to urge to an exaggerated degree intervention relating especially to the regulation of labor and of syndicalist organization, neglecting in general laws for insurance and assistance as bourgeois means of hindering revolutionary action. Meanwhile, in spite of this policy some indications permit us to hope that lessons of experience will turn away those workers, who are truly "conscious" of realities, from the path into which the doctrinaires of paradox and of chimera, aided by clever exploiters of the credulity of the masses, would wish to lead them.

VI

FRENCH LITERATURE

By ANDRÉ CHAUMEIX 1

It would be difficult to sum up in a brief formula what French literature has been during the past fifty years. The proper characterization of the period that stretches between the two wars rests precisely on what has been an aspiration marked by different stages of development. At first glance one sees clearly some of the features of that epoch which correspond to a part of the truth, but they are all incomplete. Thus the majority of writers have had more scientific preoccupations than had Racine, Boileau or Lamartine. On the other hand they interested themselves not only in the individual but in the whole group of individuals that compose society. Furthermore, in almost all cases, curiosity has not been simply artistic, it has more often been accompanied by more general cares, and if not with social concepts, at least with social preoccupations. If literature has for its object the knowledge of the human mind and through this means the bringing of life to perfection, the effort of French literature for the last fifty years might be described by saying that it has tended increasingly toward more and more complete realism, at the same time taking into account the material elements of nature, the spiritual elements of humanity and the poetic elements of language.

Immediately after 1870 the realistic influence dominated. That great doctrine which has intervened so fortunately many times in our literature, again brought to honor the qualities neglected by romanticism. The work of Flaubert, as of Renan, Leconte de Lisle, and Taine, while bringing art nearer to nature has regenerated the esprit and style and has found again precision, plenitude and solidity. But this was com1 Translated from Journal des Díbats, November 19, 1920.

promised by their successors, and extreme realism became quite the contrary of what it was originally and essentially. It ended in a narrow and systematic vision of the real. By demanding of science not only a method but also certitudes, by considering only the external and mechanical representation of things and beings, it emptied nature of a part of its content in order to arrive at a convention that was in its own fashion entirely romantic. Though Maupassant remains with his great art the best disciple of Flaubert, the most celebrated author of that period was Zola who built up a powerful and vulgar dream of life, but who certainly did not simply record reality. The very excess of that realism brought about its downfall. In a romanticist like Alphonse Daudet, there appeared already a spontaneity, a grace and a sensibility that far surpass the theories of that school. Approximately between 1880 and 1895 the greatest writers were clearly outside of realism. Anatole France, Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti and a little later Maurice Barrès show in their books a strength and an accuracy of psychology, a breadth of mind or a poetical power that mark a new current in those who wrote and those who read. And the peasant life described by René Bazin as well as by Emile Pouvillon and later by Francis Jammes had nothing in common with La Terre.

The domination of the romance in this period makes it fitting, that in defining the development of ideas, the romanticists be first cited. But the poets, historians and critics collaborated. It is by extreme precision that writers seek to express reality and to make us feel life. If one did not fear to mention pell mell these diverse works there might be mentioned at the same time La Science Expérimental by Claude Bernard, the beautiful Recherches sur les Problèmes d'Histoire by Fustel de Coulanges, the works of Ribot, books by Sorel, the historic works by Taine and by Renan, so full of recurrences when one compares them with their earlier writings, and the works of Hugo himself, who, after having been the all-powerful god of romanticism tended simultaneously toward the classic form and toward the ideas that influenced the

epoch. Parnassian poetry, on its side, by its exactitude, presents history with Heredia; and Leconte de Lisle, the most unimpassioned or the most despondent of poets, has related in full detail the conceptions of universal life in all the ages-the different steps of the eternal dream of humanity. The stage alone has been less directly involved in this intellectual movement because it remained more closely attached to formulas and to rules and because it maintained the ancient traditions. Except for light comedy where the gracefulness of French authors is always sprightly, realism has given us only Becque, and analytical writing was only renewed with de Porto-Riche. It is curious to note that the greatest successes like that of Cyrano simply bear witness to the success of a style still entirely romantic. And perhaps it was by the quest for certain sociological plays that the stage endeavored most strongly to free itself from excessive realism. The work of d'Augier and of Dumas already marked a reaction against the deadly dullness of an art which pretended to be independent of life. The work of Hervieu and of Brieux is aimed at problems of collective morality, and in greater degree the work of Curel has a tendency toward philosophic conception.

Everything worked together so that in the last years of the nineteenth century the realism of Zola finished its decline. Today we discern better the bearing of certain methods of thought and of writing which have in their time given rise to criticism. Dilettanteism and impressionism have extended the curiosity of the mind and refined the sensibility. Who does not remember that one of those accused of impressionism was Jules Lemaître and who does not know today that we owe to him one of the works in which is found the most solid observation and the most exact definition and analysis—the Contemporains and the Impressions de Théâtre? As illustrated by Mallarmé, symbolism itself, of which for a long period we have preserved only the excesses, the incongruous and the din, has also worked according to its means to recast the customary forms of poetry to bring, finally, flexibility to the language and to give a more complete conception of things. Freed little

by little from what was obscure and bizarre in theory, poets appeared and some beautiful works were created such as those of Henri de Régnier, Verlaine, Samain and Moréas. At the end of the century a notable phenomenon completed the regeneration of our literature, namely, the taking up of the study of foreign literatures. Much, as has been remarked, only echoed ideas and sentiments that originated with us and dated from Rousseau, Chateaubriand or George Sand. But these forgotten ideas were thus brought back to our minds. There were George Elliott, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Ibsen, Schopenhauer and others, some of whom were powerfully realistic in that they practised the rule of making everything subservient to the object in view, but who brought to their task a care for psychology, an ability to depict human beings, a pity and a charity which completed the liberation of minds from pseudo-realism. And by a peculiar chance, the Théâtre Libre, at first so indulgent to our extreme realists, gave hospitality to the foreign authors whose realism was, it has been said, swollen with thought and poetry.

Thus about the year 1900 there was a possible harvest of minds freed from theories, when the series of political crises brought about a more general revision of ideas. Literature was never more militant than in the years preceding the war of 1914. With rare exceptions there were few writers who, going beyond individual impressions and purely lyrical themes, had not a humanitarian and national turn of mind. Each, according to his temperament, wrote, if not polemics, at least controversial and dogmatic matters. This animated period was one of the most fruitful, through the abundance of ideas that were brought into play, of analyses that were remade and of definitions that were determined. The war did not interrupt this work for it broke out at the moment when results were being obtained. Even at a distance of some years we see today that the work then undertaken consisted in bringing into a clearer light the eternal traits of French esprit, and in the search for the real by putting aside all that cast a shadow on it. To the investigation of realism, already dead,