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So far does the materialist spirit penetrate into literature that in criticising books and men the most exaggerated importance is attached by numberless writers to the physical conditions and “environments” of the personages with whom they are concerned, till we could almost suppose that—given his ancestry and circumstances—we could scientifically construct the Man, with all his gifts and passions. As if, forsooth, a dozen brothers were alike in character, or even all the kittens in a litter! It is refreshing to read the brisk persiflage on this kind of thing in the Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1. The writer, reviewing Mr. Lecky’s books, states that but little of that splendid historian’s private life has been published, and adds:—

“Je ne me plains pas de cette sécheresse, je la bénis. C’est un plaisir, devenu si rare aujourd’hui, de pouvoir lire un livre sans en connaître l’auteur: de juger une œuvre directement et en elle-même, sans avoir à étudier ce composé d’organes et de tissus, de nerfs et de muscles, d’où elle est sortie: sans la commenter à l’aide de la physiologie, de l’ethnographie, et de la climatologie: sans mettre en jeu l’atavisme et les diathèses héréditaires!”^[7]