to hold the historical novel in abhorrence, they applied their historical methods to their records of contemporary life. Thus we inevitably arrive at the famous theory of the _document humain_--a phrase received with much derision when first publicly used in the preface to _La Faustin_, and a theory conscientiously adopted by many later novelists. And here, again, it is important to realize the restricted extent of the authors' claim. The Goncourts draw a broad, primary distinction between ancient and modern literature: the first deals mainly with generalities, the second with details. They then proceed to establish an analogous distinction between novels written before and after Balzac's time, the modern novel being based on _des documents racontes, ou releves d'apres nature_, precisely as formal history is based on _des documents ecrits_. But they make no pretence of having initiated the revolution; their share was limited to continuing Balzac's tradition, to enlarging the field of observation, and especially to multiplying the instruments of research. They declared that Gautier had, so to say, endowed literature with vision; that Fromentin, in describing the silence of the desert, had revealed the literary value of hearing; that with Zola, Loti--and they might surely have added Maupassant--a fresh sense was brought into play: _c'est le nez qui entre en scene_. Their personal contribution was their nervous sensibility: _les premiers nous avons ete les ecrivains des nerfs_. And they were prouder of this morbid quality than of their talent. They were ever on the watch for fragments of talk caught up in drawing-rooms, in restaurants, on omnibuses: ever ready to take notes at death-beds, church, or taverns. Their life was one long pursuit of _l'imprevu, le decousu, l'illogique du vrai_. These observations they transcribed at night while the impression was still acute, and these they utilized more or less deftly as they advanced towards what they rightly thought to be the goal of art: the perfect adjustment of proportion between the real and the imagined.