FORMATION OF A METHOD (1828-1852) 23 



instead of the half success. '^9 As a matter of fact, Taine anticipated 

 this criticism in student notes on 'Philosophy of History'. An 1850 

 outline ran as follows: 



'(i) Recapitulate the dominant elements, or abstract genera- 

 tors known in France, England, Rome, Greece, Italy, Germany, 

 etc. ... 



'(2) Classify the dominant elements: Three J . \ 



chiei ones: 



1^ environment. 



(given these, one can reconstitute the actual, complete history.) 



'(3) Which are the conditions for the appearance of a religion, a 



literature, a philosophy, an art (in general and of a particular 



kind).'60 



In 185 1, he indicated that he was seeking 'a definition of man' and 

 'the conditions of existence', the latter being, again, race, environ- 

 ment, and time. 61 



History thus became for Taine a kind of social psychology. 

 The 'ideas' which, mediated by individual psychologies, deter- 

 mined the behaviour of nations were not accidental, but were 

 conditioned by external forces of race, environment, and time; and 

 history was the attempt to trace causal sequences in their develop- 

 ment through time. Just as we understand the conditions of an 

 individual's freedom when we have studied his psychology, so we 

 understand the conditions of freedom in society from the study of 

 history. 



Such a correlation of psychology and history as Taine attempted 

 was based on the assumption that history could be treated as a 

 science, and studied according to the inductive method already 

 sketched. The problem was whether in history, as in the physical 

 sciences, abstraction could be carried to the point of enunciating 

 general laws.^^ That Taine thought such a progress was possible 

 is clear from his opening remarks on the 'general theory of 

 systems' : 



'A system is an organized being whose soul is a general idea, a 

 general proposition: it is that proposition which one must find. 

 The means is to enumerate the various propositions of the system, 

 to find the general propositions on which they depend, and the 

 most general proposition from which these issue. 



'(Ex. M. Ravaisson, exposition of Stoicism.) 



