HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY 71 



argument have been somewhat modified, but the doctrine and 

 spirit are unchanged. 



The remainder of this second 'Preface' takes up a series of 

 possible objections and develops the parallels between the moral 

 and other natural sciences at much greater length than did the 

 first. To the opponent of determinism who claims that he has 

 reduced men to machines: 'He forgets what an individual soul is, 

 just as not long ago he forgot what an historical force is; he separates 

 the word from the thing. . . .'^8 The individual is involved with 

 society and gains, rather than loses, hope and power by realizing 

 his relations to history. Just as we have increased our control over 

 nature through science, so 'an analogous discovery in the moral 

 sciences should furnish to men the means of predicting and modify- 

 ing the events of history to a certain degree'. ^^ Only when we 

 know the chain of causation can we break into it creatively and 

 eflfectively and experience true freedom. 



Here begins a series of references and analogies, all designed to 

 buttress Taine's general point of view and provide scientific proof 

 for his key concepts, including: (i) Mill's System of Logic, especially 

 his 'Theory of Induction'; (2) the theories of the connection of 

 characters in organisms found in Cuvier and Richard Owen; 

 (3) the theory of organic balance found in Geoffroy Saint- 

 Hilaire; (4) the rule of the subordination of characters, so 

 important in botany and zoology; (5) the theories of analogy 

 and unity of composition, found in Geoflfroy Saint-Hilaire and 

 developed by Richard Owen; finally, (6) Darwin's principle of 

 natural selection, "^o Both the moral and the biological sciences 

 deal with life, heredity, and environment; in both we find 'natural 

 groups ... of individuals constructed according to a common 

 type, divisible into families, genera, and species'; and, in both, 

 'each state of the organized being has as its double condition the 

 preceding state and the general tendency of the type'. 



The 1866 'Preface' ends with Taine's usual rhapsody to the 

 future: 'This is the opportunity which is open to him; it has no 

 limits; in such a domain, all of a man's eflforts can carry him for- 

 ward only one or two steps; he observes one little corner, then 

 another; from time to time he stops to indicate the road which 

 seems to him to be the shortest and surest. That is all that I am 

 trying to do; the liveliest pleasure of a labouring spirit lies in the 

 thought of the work which others will do afterwards.' ^2 A true 

 pathfinder, especially in his advocacy of historical method, he 



