CHAPTER VI 



NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF ART 



Early Essays in Aesthetics 



ANALYSIS, synthesis, abstraction, history, and psychology — 

 ZA these are all general tools of method which, as the 'Introduc- 

 1. \. tion' to the History made clear, could be applied to the state, 

 the family, industry, religion, and philosophy, as well as to works 

 of literature and art. The special features of Taine's applications 

 of these tools to aesthetics must next be considered, using the term 

 *art' loosely, as he did, to apply to literature and all the other arts, 

 but especially to painting and sculpture. 



Having completed a masterly application of his method in the 

 History of English Literature, Taine next turned his attention to the 

 visual arts, beginning with his Voyage in Italy (1864) and con- 

 tinuing through the various Lectures on Art which he delivered as 

 Professor of Aesthetics and the History of Art at the ficole des 

 Beaux Arts from the winter of 1864- 1865 through that of 1868- 

 1869. The 'documents' involved are now different, but the 

 methods applied to them are unchanged in any essentials. 



Here too Taine begins inductively, with particular works, and 

 abstracts from them their general laws: 'The principal point of 

 this method consists in recognizing that a work of art is not iso- 

 lated, and, consequently, that it is necessary to study the condi- 

 tions out of which it proceeds and by which it is explained.' 1 

 He groups his specimens according to their patterns of relation- 

 ships, in a scale of rising generality: works of a particular artist; 

 works of the school to which he belongs; the total situation of 

 contemporary society out of which these works have emerged. 

 This process, compared to 'analysis' in the sciences, 'consists in 

 discovering, by numerous comparisons and progressive elimina- 

 tions, traits common to all works of art . . .'.^ The goal is an 



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