CRITIQUE OF ABSTRACTION 53 



The second part, headed 'Abstraction', consists of Taine's 

 criticism of Mill's system. A brief colloquy begins when Taine 

 remarks concerning the 'English mind': 'The religious and the 

 positive spirit dwell there side by side, but separate. This produces 

 an odd medley, and I confess that I prefer the way in which the 

 Germans have reconciled science with faith. — But their philo- 

 sophy is but badly written poetry. — Perhaps so. — But what 

 they call reason, or intuition of principles, is only the faculty of 

 building up hypotheses. — Perhaps so. — But the systems which 

 they have constructed have not held their ground before experi- 

 ence. — I do not defend what they have done. — But their absolute, 

 their subject, their object, and the rest, are but big words. — 

 I do not defend their style. — What, then, do you defend? — Their 

 idea of Causation. — You believe with them that causes are 

 discovered by a revelation of the reason? — By no means. — You 

 believe with us that our knowledge of causes is based on simple 

 experience? — Still less. — You think, then, that there is a faculty, 

 other than experience and reason, capable of discovering causes? 

 — Yes. — You think there is an intermediate course between 

 intuition and observation, capable of arriving at principles, as it is 

 affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, as we find 

 that the second is? — Yes. — What is it? Abstraction. Let us return to 

 your original idea; I will endeavour to show in what I think it 

 incomplete, and how you seem to me to mutilate the human 

 mind. '27 



Taine accepts Mill's basic principle that we can know only 

 'events and the relations between them', that we must build our 

 knowledge by 'adding fact to fact. But when this is done, a new 

 operation begins, the most fertile of all, which consists in reducing 

 these complex into simple facts. A splendid faculty appears, 

 the source of language, the interpreter of nature, the parent of 

 religions and philosophies, the only genuine distinction, which 

 according to its degree, separates man from the brute, and great 

 from little men. I mean Abstraction, which is the power of isolating 

 the elements of facts, and of considering them one by one.'^s He 

 then repeats some of M. Paul's arguments 'On Method', and 

 asserts that 'There are . . . fruitful judgments, which, however, 

 are not the results of experience: there are essential propositions, 

 which, however, are not merely verbal. . . .'^9 Finally, he applies 

 this concept to a critique of Mill's theories of definitions, proof, 

 axioms, and induction. ^o 



