The classic writers on their
side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference
between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory,
the permanent and the superficial. We see this in the French comedies of
the eighteenth century, even in some of Moliere's--in his _L'Avare_ and
his _Le Misanthrope_, for example. Flaubert believed that a means of
terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the
reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the
medium in his works, we shall find the _Tentation de Saint Antoine_
entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than
_Madame Bovary_.

The reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was,
Carthaginian or low Norman, refined or _bourgeois_, modern or antique,
he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a
naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the
animal under observation. There is no sentiment in botany or in
chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. Singleness of aim is
the primary virtue in a _savant_. Things are what they are, and we
demand of him that he show them to us as they are. We accuse him of
lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them.

Likewise the artist! His function is ever to "represent:" and in order
to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts.
After this, what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism" signify?
Their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an
acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to
represent. He may make it more universal or more characteristic than
nature! But, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the
representation, what matters the subject? Is one animal or plant more
interesting than another to the naturalist? Does a name matter? All
demand the same attention. Art can make exception in its subjects no
more than science.

If we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on
this basis, Flaubert, with Leconte de Lisle and with Taine, will tell us
that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in
the power of form.

"What I have just written might be taken for something of Paul de
Kock's, had I not given it a profoundly literary form," wrote Flaubert,
while he was at work on _Madame Bovary_; "but how, out of trivial
dialogue, produce s