SCIENCE VERSUS CRITICISM? ii 



This study of Taine's method is divided into three main parts. 

 The first, a sketch of the problem and Taine's intellectual develop- 

 ment through 1852, his year as a teacher in the provinces, provides 

 necessary background information and attempts to answer the 

 question of the unity of his thought by probing its origins: most 

 of the essentials of his system are found to have been present in his 

 student notes, written before he reached the age of twenty-four. 



The second part shifts from chronology to a logical exposition 

 and critical discussion of the chief categories employed by Taine 

 in his analyses (abstraction, history, psychology, and causation; 

 race, environment, time, and master faculty) and concludes with 

 a brief consideration of the problem of the relations between 

 analysis and value judgments. This last, the central point at issue, 

 is treated in some detail in Part Three, where it is seen to involve 

 philosophic issues which have clustered around the problems of 

 'type' analysis. After an attempt is made at a functional under- 

 standing of this concept and at distinguishing its applications in 

 the arts from those in the sciences, we conclude with a brief 

 appraisal of Taine's strengths and weaknesses and of his per- 

 manent contributions to the philosophy and practice of criticism. 



NOTES 



1 Thus, for Albert L. Guerard, Taine was 'tragically torn. French Rational- 

 ism, German Idealism, English Empiricism, the historical spirit that urged 

 the acceptance of Christianity, the experimental method which suggested 

 the agnostic attitude, all strove for his allegiance. He never was able to har- 

 monize Descartes, Hegel, Bacon, Bossuet, Darwin. . . .' Literature and Society, 

 p. 88. 



2 Consider Julian Huxley's summary of scientific developments: '. . . during 

 the last hundred years each decade has seen at least one major change — if we 

 are to choose ten such, let us select photography, the theory of evolution, 

 electro-magnetic theory with its application in the shape of electric light and 

 power, the germ theory of disease, the cinema, radioactivity and the new 

 theories of matter and energy, wireless and television, the internal combustion 

 engine, chemical synthetics, and atomic fission.' UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its 

 Philosophy, p. 9. 



3 Irwin Edman's phrase, in American Philosophy Today and Tomorrow, pp. 



139-152. 



4 See an essay with that title by H. L. Mencken, in Criticism in America, Its 

 Function and Status. 



5 Op. cit.. Chapter XX, 'The Nature and Criteria of Criticism'. 



6 There is general agreement on this historical point among critics in both 

 camps. Representative of the Romantic-Naturalist point of view is Jacques 



