Naturalism: The Excesses of Realism     Another movement which appeared at roughly the same time as the Realist movement was Naturalism. The Naturalists, like their Realist contemporaries, tended to prefer pessimism to optimism; but unlike the Realists, they were obsessed with the dark side of human nature. They wrote of chaos, of war, of violent death, and of characters whose chief motivations were some of the most primitive elements of human nature. In accordance with the Theory of Evolution, they believed that man was merely an animal and a pawn in the hands of his environment. The world to them was ordered on no logical or rational principles; it was merely chaos in a vacuum. While of less lasting importance than the Realists, they were certainly significant during their own time period. The most important naturalists were Stephen Crane, Theodor Dreiser, and Frank Norris. Stephen Crane, the most important naturalist, is remembered mainly for Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage, the former of which is a poignant depiction of hopelessness and the latter a description of war, particularly the Civil War. Like the other naturalists, he made no comment on that which he observed; chaos and disorder was, to his mind, the natural state of affairs.