This argument is beside the question. It does not settle whether the apologist's influence upon the men and women of his generation and beyond--an influence which, in his lifetime, was incontestable, and may be deemed potent still, to judge by the extent to which his books are read--was and is good or bad. Balzac's personality is here only indirectly involved. His individual character might have been better or worse without the conclusion to be drawn being affected. Good men's influence is not always good, nor bad men's influence always bad. Intention may be inoperative, and effect may be involuntary. Balzac claimed the right to speak of all conduct, to represent all conduct in his fiction; and we shall see, farther on, that he imposed his claim upon those who followed him in literature. But, if he anticipated reality--and this is acknowledged--if he led society to imitate his fiction, if his exceptional representations tended, with him and after him, to become general or more frequent in one or another class of society, he must be considered morally responsible for the result. It has already been remarked, in the preceding chapter, that there are two ways of reproducing reality in literature and art, one of them favouring, not through didacticism but through emotion, the creation in the mind of a state of healthy feeling, thought, and effort; the other, that sort of fascination with which the serpent attracts its victims. It is certain that Balzac did not adequately take this into account, certain also that in parts of his _Comedy_, the secret, unconscious sympathy of the author with some of his sicklier heroes and heroines could not and did not have that dynamic moral action which he vainly desired. Of the chief French novelists or _litterateurs_ who were his contemporaries, critics are inclined to esteem his influence most evident on George Sand and Victor Hugo. Brunetiere, indeed, begins with Sainte-Beuve. But the similarities discoverable between the author of _Volupte_ and the author of the _Comedie Humaine_ were present in Sainte-Beuve's work at a period when Balzac was only just issuing from obscurity, and appear, moreover, to be due to temperament. In the case of George Sand, the inference is based partly on the praise she meted out to Balzac in her reminiscences. Brunetiere specifies the _Marquis de Villemer_ as the one proved example of imitation. But this novel was written in 1861, eleven years after Balzac's death; and, in so far as it differs from _Mauprat_ and the earlier books, whether _La Petite Fadette_ or _Consuelo_, can be shown to be the result of a natural and independent evolution.