66 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



ground on which marks are already impressed.' ^^ The operations 

 of these three causes result in the great germinal ideas which 

 characterize entire centuries and epochs: 'A certain dominant idea 

 has had sway; men, for two, for five hundred years, have taken to 

 themselves a certain ideal model of man: in the middle ages, the 

 knight and the monk; in our classic age, the courtier, the man 

 who speaks well. This creative and universal idea is displayed 

 over the whole field of action and thought. . . .'^7 



Thus far, Taine has been going inductively from effects to 

 causes, but at this point the process of generalization has, for him 

 at least, reached the level of a law: 'Here as elsewhere we have 

 but a mechanical problem; the total effect is a result, depending 

 entirely on the magnitude and direction of the producing causes. 

 The only difference which separates these moral problems from 

 physical ones is, that the magnitude and direction cannot be 

 valued or computed in the first as in the second.' ^8 This is the point 

 at which, in the physical sciences, deductions are made, on the 

 basis of formulas, for purposes of prediction and verification. 

 Despite the lack of exact measurement — a lack which has been 

 supplied, to some extent, since the time of Taine, by improved 

 statistical techniques — if we want to predict, 'it is upon an 

 examination of these forces that we must ground our prophecy', ^9 

 since these causes exhaust all the possible factors which could be 

 involved. 



Having reached this high level of abstraction, Taine proceeds 

 to enunciate a number of general laws of history: 



( 1 ) The first might be stated as the law of proportional in- 

 fluences. 'So, if we arrange the psychological map of the events and 

 sensations of a human civilization, we find first of all five or six 

 well-defined provinces — religion, art, philosophy, the state, the 

 family, the industries; then in each of these provinces natural 

 departments; and in each of these, smaller territories, until we 

 arrive at the numberless details of life such as may be observed 

 within and around us every day.'^o Now, supposing that the 

 'elementary moral state' of a civilization undergoes modification, 

 'it is clear that all the groups into which it enters, will be 

 modified proportionately'. '^i 



(2) This first law is true because of a further law of mutual 

 dependence: 'A civilization forms a body, and its parts are connected 

 with each other like the parts of an organic body.' Just as the 

 palaeontologist can reconstruct the entire skeleton from a few 



