4 THE PROBLEM IN TAINE 



However, the biographical question, though it has its own 

 intrinsic interest, concerns us here only in so far as it throws light 

 on the larger problem of the relations between science and 

 criticism, between analysis and judgment. If Taine succeeded in 

 combining the two processes, how did he do so, and what hints 

 can we glean from his solution that may be applicable today? 

 If he failed, what were the reasons? What specific categories did 

 he attempt to apply? How do these need to be modified in the 

 light of more recent knowledge? Like Taine, we are still under the 

 spell of science, though somewhat more disenchanted. Perhaps 

 those who cherish the humanities today may hope to find, in some 

 of the answers to the above questions, a framework within which 

 their own personal, aesthetic, and social values can be reconciled 

 with the demands of scientific method. 



The Problem in Our Century 



Before plunging deeper into Taine, it should be useful and 

 chastening to glance at the problem from a long-range historical 

 perspective. It is surely no accident that so many during the last 

 century (1850- 1950) have stressed the relativism of standards 

 and been wary of pronouncing critical judgments, since it has 

 been a period of unprecedentedly rapid and profound changes, 

 social, political, economic, technological, cultural, and intel- 

 lectual. 2 The key-note of our century has been evolution and 

 growth, and the feeling of rapidly accelerating development has 

 tended to knock the props out from under conventional and tradi- 

 tional forms and criteria in literature and art. Our 'naturalistic 

 temper' 3 has been most fully embodied in that searching habit of 

 mind characteristic of the scientist, who, even when he does 

 reach conclusions, considers his judgments to be tentative hypo- 

 theses subject to change. These, and other, cultural factors have 

 naturally led to multiplied 'isms' and critical schools. 



So profoundly have these changes penetrated what Joseph 

 Wood Krutch once called 'the modern temper' that the very 

 nature and function of criticism — indeed, its very possibility — 

 has been subject to much scrutiny. Still confronted by endless 

 'criticisms of criticism', of which this study must perforce be 

 another, we seem now to have entered a final stage of disintegra- 

 tion, characterized by 'Criticism of Criticism of Criticism' "^ — 

 and should be about ready to come back to our senses! A fairly 

 recent attempt at synthesis. The Arts and the Art of Criticism, by 



