ABSTRACT
The paradoxical effect of the depersonalization of politics may be to increase the burden of prejudice that these abstract forces have to carry. Certainly, Adams gives evidence of this in his obsessive hatred of usurious finance, symbolized most often by the "gold-bug Jew." Is it easier to hate forces rather than men? This is difficult to say, but the premise that "forces" need to be ruled or resisted or overcome effectively eliminates the need for interpersonal recognitions and, as a consequence, the moral responsibility governing them. Or else these functions may become those of hindsight. The conflict between naturalist politics and the older democratic tradition makes itself most evident here. In any case, and in wider direction, beyond politics, naturalist fatality is a strong teacher, able to instruct both passivity and violence, both fanatic enthusiasm and stoic submission. The pattern characterizes a typical division in naturalist fiction between the emotions and intelligence, between actors and spectators, between aggressors and victims.
