121
Here the narrator equates the moral realm with positivistic science's understanding of the natural world. The idea is that nature itself provides a ready-made system of ethics; scientists must only uncover it. Frígilis's experiments do just that. Late nineteenth-century science often served to buttress oppressive ideology in this manner (as in social Darwinism). Ironically, in La Regenta (and in Galdós's novels) science tends to subvert the dominant discourse of the aristocrats.
122
An abridged translation entitled El origen del hombre. La selección natal y la sexual appeared in 1876.
123
These and other distortions of scientific ideas are to be considered in light of Morse Peckharn's «Darwinism and Darwinisticism». Peckham makes a distinction between what he calls «Darwinism» (ideas introduced by Darwin) and «Darwinisticism» (ideas falsely attributed to Darwin) in tracing intertextual influences of the Origin. While to treat «Darwinism» as a monolithic entity may not be wise in these days of reader-response theory, it is clear that the characters of La Regenta practiced «Darwinisticism» when they thought they were preaching or condemning «Darwinism».
124
The world «transplantation» itself evinces medicine's debt to agriculture. Ernest Gray explains how Hunter became interested in grafting roosters' combs: «Drawing his surgical practice from what Nature taught him, since cuttings could be grafted on to trees it was logical to suppose animal tissues too could be transplanted. Thus he was successful [...] in implanting a tooth into a cock's comb; and he also transplanted the spur of a cock on to the comb of a hen, and the testicles of a cock into the abdomen of a hen» (86-87). The scandal among the Vetustans had Frígilis replicated this last experiment could be well imagined! (I would like to thank Dr. Yvan Silva, Professor of Surgery at Wayne State University and Director of Surgical Education at the North Oakland Medical Center, for sharing with me his knowledge of the history of transplantation.)
125
Ana falsely believes Frígilis conflates the notions of grafting and hybridization: in her words, Crespo is «un hombre que tenía la manía de la aclimatación, que todo lo quería armonizar, mezclar y confundir, que injertaba perales en manzanos y creía que todo era uno y lo mismo, y pretendía que el caso era 'adaptarse al medio'» (1: 375). But the rooster episode clearly shows that Frígilis believes that cross-breeding the Spanish and English varieties of «Gallus gallus» would create an undesirable hybrid. Frígilis wants a Spanish cock with the comb of the English variety.
126
This subject, of course, deserves much more attention than can be devoted here; what matters is how the narrator sees the question. For the Positivist, science objectively discovers nature's truths.
127
For this reason Frígilis can be a comical character, prone to the excesses of pseudoscience, and still evoke the power of positivistic discourse. But the other inhabitants of Vetusta do not accept the message in spite of the messenger; they see Frígilis not as a site of conflict between a variety of languages, but as an unadulterated image of an absurd, grotesque scientific language.
128
Philosophers Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson have written at length concerning the merits of metaphysical realism. Putnarn's discussion of what he calls «internal realism» provides an interesting counterpoint to social constructivism, while, at the same time, avoiding metaphysical realism's externalist perspective on reality (48-74; 103-26). Donald Davidson denies the possibility of Kuhnian «paradigm shifts» by arguing that any disagreements between speaker and listener are about specific propositions highlighted on a background of shared, true beliefs. Since to communicate at all a listener and a speaker must hold in common a multitude of beliefs about the world, there cannot be the semantic incommensurabilities called for by Kuhn.
129
Hemos utilizado corchetes para indicar que el texto por ellos envuelto ha sido desechado (tachado) por el autor; así lo seguiremos haciendo en adelante.
130
Los manuscritos galdosianos constituyen el primer eslabón de un estudio de su elaboración textual; pero está claro que no son el verdadero «primer texto», en sentido estricto. Sin duda, el autor partía de un anterior esbozo textual. También parece claro, como apuntó Beatriz Entenza («Manuscritos» 150), que el autor los utilizó como «texto intermedio».