We are not saying that Zola’s ideas ran in this groove, only that it is possible that they did. If they did, he would have been utterly wrong; but he would not have been the first nor the last man whose views have been influenced by his interests. No man who knows both France and England better than Nordau seems to do could for one moment doubt that had Zola been born and educated in England, where the surroundings are so vastly different to those of France, he would have written books of quite a different character, and probably free from obscenity. If this be true, it constitutes another reason why the surrounding circumstances of an author should be considered before it is asserted that inborn degeneration is alone responsible for the blemishes of his work. Nordau himself points out that the fashion which brought Zola to the front is on the decline, and that his influence is on the wane. If so, it only proves how limited the influence of such supposed degenerates really is, and that—at least with regard to Zola—Nordau’s book is out too late, and those who have been deeply impressed by his “vigorous affirmations” about the mental decay of the race need not despond. Over and over again civilization and society have been threatened by new and apparently dangerous tendencies, but they have generally culminated in absurd exaggerations, and have thus lost their potency. Who knows whether Zola, through the wisdom that the years bring, will not change his opinions, and with them his vein of writing? We feel morally certain that he is now engaged on some novel entirely free from those erotic allusions which Nordau says he cannot avoid—a book as pure as the first part of _La Joie de Vivre_; and if he does, what will become of Nordau’s imperious dogmas?