BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS: RACE AND GEOGRAPHY 89 



though it is sometimes the case, that heredity is being treated as 

 the primary cause, as in most 'racist' theories. ^ All four factors are 

 usually considered together, and, as is evident from the 'Introduc- 

 tion' to the History, '^^ Taine's most vital concern seems to be with 

 'the man invisible', or psychology. The fact that Race is usually 

 considered first in his books (notably the History and Lectures on 

 Art), undoubtedly prejudices the case against him with most 

 current readers, whose sensibilities on that subject are justifiably 

 tender. 



We must begin by emphasizing that most of Taine's ideas on 

 heredity, since they are pre-Mendelian, are unequivocally 

 wrong: he fell a victim to most of the errors common to his day, 

 some of which have since been abused by racist ideologists. 

 Though the fact of innate difference among people cannot very 

 well be denied, subsequent research and debate has usually 

 centred around the mechanics by which those differences are 

 passed from generation to generation and on the relative import- 

 ance of the hereditary factor as compared to the action of the 

 environment (the 'nature versus nurture' discussion). 



Taine is extremely vague on the mechanics of heredity, since he 

 lacks our knowledge of chromosomes and genes; he usually falls 

 back on the primitive, and unfortunately still popular, notion of 

 'blood'. Thus, the Saxons, because they are 'cool-blooded', are 

 'of a cold temperament', 11 and, after the Norman conquest, 'the 

 English blood ended by gaining the predominance over the Norman 

 blood in their veins'. 12 Of course, the 'blood' theory of Race has 

 been definitely refuted 1 3; any such gross over-simplification, which 

 treats heredity as if it were 'a matter of the transmission of gross 

 aggregates of characters, is both erroneous and meaningless'. i^ 



Taine is equally wrong on the nature versus nurture issue. 

 He assumes the Lamarckian principle that acquired charac- 

 teristics are inherited: 'Under this steady pressure the character 

 forms; that which was habit becomes instinct; the form acquired by 

 the parent is found hereditary in the child. . . .'^^ This principle has 

 been generally rejected as unnecessary, ^^ and emphasis is placed 

 today on the influence of cultural factors (such as language, pat- 

 terns of behaviour associated with child-rearing, and education in 

 the broadest sense) in transmitting acquired characteristics. But 

 these are elements for which Taine intended to account by means 

 of Environment and Time. 



Further, Taine is sometimes naive in his assumption of the 



