56 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



a critic who seeks to depict, but not against a critic who tries to 

 philosophize.'"*^ That Taine was not unaware of the virtues of a 

 true 'painter' in Hterature, art, and history has already been 

 sufficiently emphasized; the term 'peintre', and the contrast 

 between abstraction and concreteness, had recurred frequently 

 in Part Two of the Essay on Livy,"^"^ and the same contrast had been 

 used to indicate Victor Cousin's limitations as a biographer, his 

 failure to use 'the little facts' and 'the magic words' which make a 

 character come alive: 'It must be that the imagination of the 

 painter does not resemble that of the orator at all.''*^ 



However, Taine's purpose was a different one. The object of 

 his philosophic criticism was to go beyond analysis and re-creative 

 description and achieve true understanding, to ask, and attempt 

 to answer, the question: Pourquoi? Why?^^ Repeating his familiar 

 analogy between the critic and the anatomist, he insisted that 

 both must be concerned with finding 'the original spiritual form 

 whence all the important qualities are inferred of themselves', ^^ 

 with causes rather than accidents, and with causes hierarchically 

 arranged in the order of their importance. He cited Aristotle to 

 the effect that 'the universal is the sole object of science', and 

 added the possibility that, by means of such criticism, 'perhaps 

 one will be able to predict'. "^^ 



Finally, Taine made an eloquent, and rather humble, plea for 

 consideration of the method on its own merits, rather than in 

 terms of his merits or demerits as a person or writer. The enter- 

 prise itself was surely inspiring: 'This spectacle seems to me to be 

 a noble one; method is the instrument which provides it; that 

 instrument, invented by Aristotle and Hegel, deserves only that 

 one should defend it; I have only to beg pardon for the work- 

 man.' ^9 (Despite his differences with Hegel on metaphysical issues, 

 he cited him here as the chief modern example and exponent of 

 a philosophical method, both in history and aesthetics.) 



The Preface to the second edition of The Classic Philosophers 

 (January, i860) was written after two years of ill health which had 

 interrupted (or slowed down) the writing of the History of English 

 Literature (see our 'Selected Bibhography'). Not unnaturally, 

 therefore, it began with reminiscences concerning Taine's first 

 experience in the Latin Quarter eight years ago (1852) and the 

 conversations and issues out of which the book grew.^o This 

 Preface, like the essay on Mill, stressed not analysis, but synthesis, 

 the idea oi cause ^ which Taine equated with the ideas of substance, 



