CHAPTER V 



HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY 



^On Laws in History^ 



THE two new tools of analysis which Taine hailed in his 

 chapters 'On Method' and developed most thoroughly 

 were history and psychology; they indicated the kinds of 

 abstractions which he considered were, or could be, truly scientific. 

 In notes 'On Laws in History',! written in 1858 after the Critical 

 and Historical Essays had appeared and during the slack period of 

 his labours on the History of English Literature, he attempted to 

 sharpen the distinctions necessary for use of these tools, and, as a 

 result, his general idea of abstraction was made more specific. 



As always in Taine, there is a dual process involved: from 

 effect to cause (induction) and from cause to effect (deduction). 

 The former is subdivided into two kinds, according as the 

 'groups' under consideration are particular (works of literature 

 and religion, forms of society and the family) or general (abstract 

 laws, taken from the particulars) ; the latter (deduction) involves 

 the scientific procedure of prediction. The idea of relations, or 

 'couples', is central: 'In other words, to form particular relations, 

 to extract from them general relations, and, establishing the 

 actual presence of the first term, to predict the arrival of the 

 second. '2 



These relationships, especially in the 'moral sciences', always 



involve a psychological element, which itself functions as both 



cause and effect. Thus, the historian's task is twofold: (i)'. . . to 



seek, for each kind of group, the kind of feelings and faculties 



which are its antecedents. (I have done it for history, poetry, 



philosophy, in Livy, La Fontaine, The Classic Philosophers, and, as 



yet only in part, for religion, society, here and there). '^ (2) These 



faculties and sentiments in turn have their causes, or conditions — 



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