50 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



in which the essay on Mill was written. Thus, the 'Theory of the 

 Poetic Fable', which had been the opening chapter of the original 

 thesis, was placed near the end of the third edition; Chapter VI 

 of the original, headed 'The Conditions of Beauty — Summary', was 

 omitted and replaced by the present 'Conclusion', in which ideas 

 concerning race, environment, and 'great men' — similar to those in 

 the History of English Literature, on which he was then working — were 

 expressed; and a chapter on 'The Gallic Spirit' was added, lo 



As Rosea has pointed out, the first version of La Fontaine is a 

 better indication of Taine's early method, in some of its aspects, 

 than the final one we now read.ii Though he emphasized the 

 importance of induction and abstraction from particulars on a 

 theoretical level, his actual practice, on many occasions, was 

 rather to start with a thesis (or 'hypo-thesis'?) and then to seek the 

 facts which proved his point. Merely moving the generalizations 

 concerning poetic fables, more or less mechanically, from the 

 beginning of La Fontaine and placing them at the end did not, 

 of course, constitute a real shift from deduction to induction. 



However, this concern for concrete particulars and inductive 

 method did not arise merely as a result of Taine's study of Mill, 

 but was rather a product of his youthful Romanticism and his 

 taste in literature and art. For example, he criticized Livy's 

 portrait of Fabius Maximus, who is presented as a model of reason 

 and virtue, as follows: 



'These eulogies make one distrustful. That a person should be 

 steady and prudent, by all means. Yet he is not prudence and 

 virtue. He is a man, not a quality; his nature gives a special turn 

 to his discretion. An abstract being is a mutilated being, and that 

 which is incomplete is not living. The imagination feels that 

 something is lacking from the portrait, i^ 



A similar reaction against abstraction was at the heart of his 

 criticisms of the 'oratorical genius' (in Livy and others) and of the 

 neo-classic movement in general. 



The generally Romantic drift of Taine's taste at this time is 

 especially clear in his letters to his old professor, Adolphe Hatzfeld. 

 In one, which referred to the La Fontaine and his definition of 

 beauty there, he favoured the particular over the general, setting 

 himself in opposition 'to pure ideas, to general types, to cold 

 allegories'. 13 Though he emphasized that art seeks the charac- 

 teristic, he did not mean by that mere local colour; rather, he set 



