24 THE PROBLEM IN TAINE 



'Note that such is the progress of all science; each science 

 studies a single thing, the human body, the animal series, the 

 chemical substance, etc. Its method is to collect the properties 

 and then to reascend to the general definition or proposition; and 

 the philosophy which is the science of the Whole likewise seeks the 

 definition of the Whole.' ^3 



Thus, in eflfect, he was extending the nineteenth-century, opti- 

 mistic theory of science to philosophy itself 



The history of philosophy too was to be studied by a method 

 which combined induction and abstraction; in this case, the 

 particulars involved were not objects in the natural world, not 

 even cultural patterns, but rather systems of ideas whose organic 

 unities were to be traced. In July, 1851, after completion of his 

 studies at the Normal School, Taine wrote the following summary 

 in the margin of the 'History of Philosophy' manuscript: 



'One must proceed in the history of Philosophy exactly as in 



History generally : ( i ) Separate the exposition of the systems from their 



valuation; (2) Give the formula of the systems; (3) Classify them 



as in zoology; (4) Find the general laws of their origin; (5) Trace 



the universal movement of which each system is an instant; 



(6) Find the ideal type and ideal development of each school \ (7) Show the 



action of external forces. In a word, produce a zoology of the 



human spirit with psychology as the physiological and anatomical 

 principle.' 64 



The italicized parts of this note indicate clearly that the central 

 thesis of Taine's criticism (namely, its attempt at blending the 

 processes of scientific analysis and critical judgment) was not a 

 late development in his thought, as some critics claim, ^5 but was 

 there practically from the beginning. 



A Tear in the Provinces: The Study of Hegel 



Philosophy of history naturally suggests the influence of Hegel 

 on Taine, a subject which has been studied with admirable 

 thoroughness and perceptiveness by D. D. Rosea. As we have 

 already seen,66 Taine had serious reservations when he first read 

 the German thinker. Nevertheless, like so many others in the 

 latter half of the nineteenth century, he was very much intrigued 

 by the latter's systematic metaphysics, which seemed to be an 

 infinitely richer food than Victor Cousin's eclecticism: 'Hegel 



