Explore "Balzac" by Edgar Saltus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"One would say he had read the inscription on the gates of Busyrane, -- 'Be bold; ' and on the second gate, -- 'Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold; ' and then again had paused well at the third gate, -- 'Be not too bold. " -- EMERSON, _Plato._
The general plan and outline of the "Comedie Humaine" originated in a comparison between humanity and animal existence. That which Buffon had achieved in zoology, Balzac proposed to accomplish in moral science, and the habits and customs as well as the vices and virtues of his contemporaries found in him a secretary whose inventory offers to posterity an elaborate insight into the every-day life of France in the nineteenth century, and realizes for their future curiosity that work which the ancient monarchies have neglected to bequeath to us as their own civilizations.