262 NOTES AND COMMENTS [apkil 



Zola suffered much from poverty in his youth, hut " when he 

 began to be successful, he was more at ease." Quite so : 



La Palisse cut pen de bien 

 Pour soutenir sa naissance ; 

 Mais il ne manqua di rien, 

 Dfes qu'il fut dans l'abondance. 



There is a certain stateliness in the following splendid marshalling 

 of diseases : " Zola has orbicular contraction, cardiac spasms, thoracic 

 cramps, false angina pectoris, sensory hyperesthesia, obsessions, and 

 impulsive ideas." With this swan-like song the booklet crackles out, 

 and we are not sorry. We do not know how much of this precious 

 sort of nonsense is produced annually in the United States, but if by 

 any chance anybody there or in this country is under the impression 

 that this is science, the sooner his mind is disabused of the illusion 

 the better. A study of Zola's personality forsooth, why, it is merely 

 a collection of futile and rather disgusting details about his person, — 

 a dull sort of drivel which is in reality a mingling of the impertinences 

 of the interviewer with the indiscretions of the family physician. We 

 cannot penetrate into the mysterious recesses of the artist's personality 

 by observing the effect which aperient medicine produces upon him ; 

 we may measure with exactitude the length of his ears, and count 

 minutely the number of hairs which grow on the back of his hand, 

 but these things will not teach us wherein lies the magic of his style, 

 nor give us the divining rod by which to discover the hidden springs 

 of his fancy. 



What is Life? 



" What is Life ? " asks Dr. Gustav Mann (Trans. Oxford Univ. Junior 

 Scientific Club, No. G, Feb. 1899, pp. 9 9-101), and one seeks in his 

 three lively pages for an answer, which, it is almost needless to say, 

 one does not find. Dr. Mann is evidently unwilling to postulate a 

 " special unexplainable force," but he admits that the origin of organisms 

 meant a new synthesis. " We must have, in addition to the old laws 

 which govern the inorganic world, new ones which govern and regulate 

 organic existence." This may be a very sound conclusion, but it is 

 couched in strangely mediaeval phraseology for the Oxford University 

 Junior Scientific Club. 



" The difference between inorganic and organic existence amounts 

 to this : that the inorganic world has not the power of producing a 

 chain of chemical events, or rather a cycle of events ; but that when 

 one chemical affinity is satisfied there ensues rest till a new substance, 

 for which it has a greater affinity, is brought into contact with it ; this 

 meeting being one of chance (mathematical probability), or design 

 (chemist). Organic individuals, within physiological limits, are inde- 



