1 6 THE PROBLEM IN TAINE 



theoretical backgrounds would be like studying Aristotle's 

 Poetics without ever having read his Metaphysics and Ethics. 



Realization of this fact is necessary in order to correct the rather 

 paradoxical nature of Taine's influence and reputation, which, 

 almost against his will, was strongest in fields that are not strictly 

 philosophical. 19 That such had not been Taine's hope and inten- 

 tion is evident from many passages in his correspondence. At the 

 very time when he was steeped in his History of English Literature^ 

 he frequently found occasion to remind his friends that his first 

 love had been philosophy; in 1856, near the beginning of literary 

 labours which were to take the best part of eight years, he said: 

 T believe that I've been foolish to undertake this history of 

 English Literature. That is too long a road by which to arrive at 

 philosophy.' 20 Similarly, in 1864, when the work had been com- 

 pleted, he reaffirmed the primacy of his philosophical thesis: 



'. . . do you believe that one would carry on such a trade as mine, 

 if one didn't believe his idea to be true? . . . We have one sole 

 compensation, the inner faith that we have come across some 

 general idea which is very large, very powerful, and which from 

 now on and for a century will govern an entire province of 

 studies and of human knowledge. Otherwise, it would be following 

 a fool's trade to judge Shakespeare for the hundredth time, or to 

 go about the business of collecting such illustrious unknowns as 

 Barrow or Sidney in order to unearth them and arrange them in a 

 row. We have no value, we do not live, we do not work, we do not 

 resist except by grace of our philosophic idea. Now mine is that 

 all the feelings, all the ideas, all the states of the human soul are products, 

 having their causes and their laws. . . '21 



That the original and central source of this 'master idea' of 

 Taine's was the philosophy of Spinoza is underlined in the 

 'Preface' to the Essay on Livy: 



'Man, says Spinoza, is not in nature "as an empire within an 

 empire", but as a part within a whole; and the movements of the 

 spiritual automaton which is our being are regulated just as are 

 those of the material world in which it is included. 



'Is Spinoza right? Can one employ exact methods in criticism? 

 Will a talent be expressed by a formula? Are the faculties of a man, 

 like the organs of a plant, dependent on one another? Are they 

 measured and produced by a unique law? Given this law, can one 



