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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
I applied to the observation of human societies rules analogous to those used in the study of plants and minerals; in other words I created a method that allowed me to know personally all the nuances of peace and discord, of prosperity and suffering, which are found in contemporary European society.
The dusty collection of numbers invited parody as soon as public statistics were under way in the 1820s. The jokes were feeble and are best forgotten, with one exception. Balzac's Physiology of Marriage began with meditations headed ‘conjugal statistics’. The first printing of 1826 had 20 octavo pages on this unpromising topic. The second and standard version of 1829 had 62. What began as a spoof ended by making Balzac think hard. ‘In 1826 the notion of conjugal statistics furnished Balzac only with an amusing idea’ writes Bardèche, first modern editor of the obscure printing of 1826; ‘the additions of 1829 show us that Balzac's mind had become oriented towards very different reflections. What in 1826 had been a matter for simple calculation, became in 1829 a general view of society, a sort of panorama of the French bourgeoisie.’ Statistics directed him towards the human comedy.
The Physiology had lots of targets other than statistics. Its very title and a chapter on hygiene made fun of Broussais's ‘physiological’ school of medicine. Balzac may have had in mind another title (it is written in his notes): ‘the marital code, or the art of keeping one's wife faithful’. In the end the piece was subtitled ‘Eclectic philosophical meditations on conjugal happiness and unhappiness’.
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