84 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



Whatever better-informed historians and students of art may 

 justifiably say in criticism of Taine's formulations — and, though 

 extremely general, they are usually based on a considerable 

 weight of evidence — the methodological point is abundantly 

 clear: at no point does Taine separate his scientific analyses from his 

 critical judgments . This is true because of his very conception of art 

 as imitating (and, if you will, expressing) essential character, which, 

 though a real phenomenon arrived at by abstraction from experi- 

 ence, also has its place in the ideal order of things. Historical 

 method and attention to milieu, which make us sensitive to the 

 differences among schools of art, also enable us to penetrate to 

 fundamental causes which imply universal standards for judgment. 

 This principle, central to Taine's entire method, was made most 

 fully explicit in his lectures on The Ideal in Art (see our Chapter 

 XII). However, before the relations between analysis and 

 judgment in Taine can be discussed, some of the issues raised by 

 his theory of the conditions or causes of art must be more fully 

 considered. 



NOTES 



1 Lectures on Art, First Series, p. 23. 



2 Ibid., p. 40. 



3 Ibid., p. 36. 



4 Of the work of art on psychology and history. — S. J. K. 



5 Ibid., p. 88. 



6 (i) A Traite du Beau, dated 29 April, 1848 {V. & C, I, 20). (2) A notebook 

 containing Ide'es generates sur la litterature et les Arts, written while in Nevers, 

 a section of which, on the Ideal, began: 'The Ideal is the real purified' {V. & C, 

 I, 197, Note). 



"7 Preface to second edition (see 'Selected Bibliography'). 



8 La Fontaine, pp. 342-344. 



9 'Hippolyte Taine and the Background of Modern Aesthetics'. 



10 Lectures, First Series, p. 76. 



11 Ibid., p. 45. 



12 Ibid., p. 56. 



13 Ibid., p. 64. 



14 Ibid., p. 76. 



15 Ibid., p. 80, our italics. 



16 Italy (1871), I, 236, our italics. 



17 Ibid., p. 255, our italics. 



18 Italy, II, 100. 



19 Lectures, First Series, p. 58. 



20 Vol. II, p. 277. 



