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CHAPTER IV 



CRITIQ^UE OF ABSTRACTION 



The Ambiguity of Abstraction 



THE key to Taine's attempt, in The Classic Philosophers, at a 

 balance between analytic and synthetic methods lay in the 

 concept of abstraction: it is through that process — together 

 with the more obviously scientific methods of hypothesis and 

 verification — that we come to understand causes and arrive at 

 'summary and generative' facts. One naturally asks: 'What are 

 the virtues and dangers of abstraction in criticism?' 



Taine's own answer to this question may be best approached 

 in his own lucid and succinct summation^ of the central argument 

 of The Classic Philosophers: 



'If the reader will deign to reread the exposition of the causes 

 which guided its founders, he will find two: the need to subordinate 

 science to morality, and the taste for abstract words. . . . 



'This preference for morality finally reshaped the philosophy 

 of M. Cousin completely. Thus transformed, it refuted scepticism, 

 as an immoral doctrine, by means of an equivocation; reduced 

 psychology to the study of reason and liberty, the only faculties 

 which have a connection with morality; defined reason and 

 liberty in such a manner as to serve morality; prescribed to art 

 the function of expressing moral beauty; established God as 

 guardian of morality, and based the immortality of the soul on its 

 providing a sanction for morality. Thus engrossed, it suppressed 

 the philosophic philosophy, leaving in their entirety the ancient 

 objections, repeating the ancient demonstrations, obliterating the 

 questions of science, reducing science to an oratorical machine 

 serving the needs of education and government. 



'This preference for morality mustered all of M. Jouflfroy's 

 studies around the "problem of human destiny". It perverted his 



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