Paris of to-day : an intimate account of its people, its home life, and its places of interest . rarymovement by establishing the rights of thecritic. Taine overthrew in France the theoriesof Hume, of Kant and of Hegel, tending toprove that each person is the judge of whathe sees by demonstrating that science canexactly establish in what proportion differentimaginations transform the same reality, andtherefore receive impressions more or lesselevated, and consequently more or less opento discussion. I remember seeing this admirably illus-trated one day at the Salon when two work-men were talki
Paris of to-day : an intimate account of its people, its home life, and its places of interest . rarymovement by establishing the rights of thecritic. Taine overthrew in France the theoriesof Hume, of Kant and of Hegel, tending toprove that each person is the judge of whathe sees by demonstrating that science canexactly establish in what proportion differentimaginations transform the same reality, andtherefore receive impressions more or lesselevated, and consequently more or less opento discussion. I remember seeing this admirably illus-trated one day at the Salon when two work-men were talking about a picture. It was arepresentation of a field of wheat, crude incolor, with every blade carefully and minutelypainted, reproduced as in a , but that mans got that wheatfield well; was what they were their elementary intellectual and artisticdevelopment, that was probably the only sortof picture which could give them the sensa-tion of a real field, and the sudden emotionwhich a more highly organized and cultivatedtemperament would have before a landscape. &5 7 ^ «3 ^ THE MEN OF LETTERS. 87 in which there was some wide, elevated im-pression of nature, interpreted through thetemperament of an artist, they could not miss,for they had never known it. No matter whatform the evolution of literature may havetaken during the last years, its principle hasalways remained the same; that is, the scrupu-lous study of the different sensations whichlife constantly unrolling itself everywheremakes upon the mind and soul of each indi-vidual. This seems to be a sort of touchstonefor judging French literature. One of the most important forms of theliterary evolution, of course, has been thenaturalist movement, with M. Zola at itshead. It is nothing new to say that M. Zolanever was really a naturalist. His imagina-tion also transformed reality, and he saw ofhumanity only its envelope. He built up acolossal system, but only to interpret the ani-mal side of hum
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