NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF ART 79 



aristocratic monarchies of the seventeenth century, and the 

 industrial democracies of the present day, directed by the 

 sciences'. 25 Taine shows in some detail, in each case, how a special 

 'soil' produced a special kind of artistic 'flower'. 



The rational proof consists of a summary of the necessary chain 

 of causes and effects: 'A general situation, provoking tendencies 

 and special faculties; a representative man, embodying these 

 predominant tendencies and faculties; sounds, forms, colours, or 

 language giving this character sensuous form, or which comport 

 with the tendencies and faculties comprising it, such are the four 

 terms of the series; the first carries with it the second, the second 

 the third, and the third the fourth, so that the slightest variation 

 of either involves a corresponding variation in those that follow, 

 and reveals a corresponding variation in those that precede it, 

 permitting abstract reasoning in either direction in an ascending 

 or descending scale of progression. '26 (In other words, inquiry 

 may proceed deductively or inductively; from the general to the 

 particular or from the particular to the general ; or, observing the 

 distinction made in the essay on Mill, from effect to cause or from 

 cause to effect.) 



In this section, milieu is treated as the fundamental condition, 

 but such 'accessory causes' as race, 'the particular period of the 

 art' [moment), and 'the particular sentiments of each artist' are also 

 mentioned. 27 Emphasis on all these variables leads to the typically 

 nineteenth-century assertion that 'the growth of experience is 

 infinite, and the applications of discovery unlimited' 28; in this 

 manner, Taine sought perhaps to encourage originality in the 

 younger generation of students at the £cole des Beaux Arts. He 

 concludes with Goethe's saying: 'Fill your mind and heart, 

 however large, with the ideas and sentiments of your age, and the 

 work will follow. '29 



Verification of Law: Art in Italy 



Taine' s lectures for the next two years analyzed the art of 

 Italy in an attempt to verify the law he had enunciated of 'the 

 exact and necessary correspondence which is always seen between 

 a work and the medium out of which it is evolved'. ^^ Since the 

 first step in this analysis had been a trip to the home of that art 

 and elaborate notetaking there, we may best see his method in 

 action by glancing first at the volumes on Italy in which his 

 impressions were recorded. 



