Notes

1.     Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: Balzac was an admirer of the famous ‘visionary naturalist’ Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844), some of whose theories presaged Darwin. In his preface to the Human Comedy, Balzac declares his intention to apply scientific methods to the study of ‘social species’, which ‘have existed and always will exist, just as there are zoological species’. As a keen observer of the natural history of humanity, he is concerned with the way species adapt, or fail to adapt, to the ever-changing milieux in which they find themselves. See note 146 on Georges Cuvier and Introduction p. xx.