42 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



beneath the surface of historical events, it has stimulated the 

 imagination; second, inasmuch as it is on the way to becoming a 

 science itself, it will in turn render history, and thus criticism 

 which is aware of history, itself truly scientific. 



'Analysis stops here; you know wherein it consists: to translate 

 words into facts; that is its definition; exact translation, complete 

 translation; those are its two parts. In exact translation, one 

 brings words which are obscure, vague, abstract, and of a com- 

 phcated and doubtful meaning, back to the facts, portions of 

 facts, analogies or combinations of facts which they signify. In 

 order to do this one places the word in the particular, unique, and 

 determined state of things under which it can be born; thus one 

 causes it to be reborn; and by repeating this operation several 

 times, on distinct and similar examples, one finally has unravelled 

 the circumstance to which it corresponds. That is the first step.'i^ 

 This reads hke a description of what a good deal of modern logic, 

 and especially the new science of semantics, attempts to do. 



'In the second step of complete translation, one adds to the 

 knowledge of each fact noted the knowledge of the unknowns 

 which surround it. In order to do this, one modifies the observed 

 object or one replaces the observing instrument.' i^ M. Pierre 

 concludes by picturing this latter, inductive process as a never-to- 

 be-completed book: 'Your successors will read twenty more 

 pages and render your translation more complete. Their sons will 

 advance still further, and so on. The book is endless.' i5 



However, his more imaginative friend is not satisfied with such 

 an inconclusive conclusion. He rises and says: Peut-etre. Maybe! 



The Method of Synthesis 



M. Paul, taking up the discussion in Taine's concluding chapter, 

 goes on to consider the metaphysical issue which any process of 

 analysis raises. 'We murder to dissect.' The living reahty requires 

 more than a description of so-called 'facts' and their relations: 

 'Each group of facts has its cause; each cause is a fact.'i^ With 

 this discussion of causation, Taine enters into the deductive 

 phase of his method: cause is defined as 'A fact from which one 

 could deduce the nature, the relations, and the mutations of the 



others.' 1"^ 



The example which M. Paul develops at some length in order 

 to illustrate the centrahty of causation is a biological one: the 

 process of nutrition, essential to life, which he reduces to the 



