BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS: RACE AND GEOGRAPHY 91 



These Notes are organized in thirty-five chapters, of which only 

 two or three are biological in their tendency. For example, the 

 chapter on 'Typical English Men and Women' begins with a 

 paragraph comparing his method with 'that of artists and of 

 naturalists' 24 and proceeds to classify the 'specimens' into three 

 main types: robust, phlegmatic, and 'the active, energetic human 

 being . . .'. Taine's method was impressionistic, and these types 

 are not too neatly defined. For the robust type, 'there are two 

 probable causes. The one, which is of a special character, the 

 heredity conformation of the race; the other, which is the custom 

 of open-air living and bodily exercise. '^5 A chapter on 'Charac- 

 teristics of the English Mind' mentions first that 'EngHsh education 

 tends to produce this result' ^6 (a liking for facts, empiricism) and 

 only later adds that 'this inclination is hereditary', the result of 

 'an innate disposition peculiar to the race'. 27 But most of the 

 chapters are devoted to descriptions of social types, political insti- 

 tutions, economic classes, art, literature, and religion. In brief, 

 there is no exclusive emphasis on the biological factor: the scope of 

 Taine's interest seems more truly anthropological. ^s 



Taine's scientific motive of seeking in the physical environment 

 an explanation of the persistence of biological traits is thus an 

 early example of Social Darwinism. 29 But he had another, more 

 personal and persistent, motive for writing so eloquently on the 

 influence of climate, namely, his own very profound sensitivity to 

 nuances of landscape, which Victor Giraud attributes to his child- 

 hood in Ardennes. 3 This is in part a Romantic inheritance, 

 though Taine's travel books are remarkably restrained in avoiding 

 some of the more sentimental trappings of earlier 'voyages'. In 

 any case, beginning with the Voyage to the Pyrenees ( 1 854) and con- 

 tinuing through his Notes on England (1871), he was consistent in 

 his close and loving attention to geography, which was probably 

 more important for his conception of Race than simple recognition 

 of biological heredity. 



Finally, as a further extension of his tendency to merge Race 

 with Land, Taine frequently though not very consistently uses 

 the term in a manner synonymous with Nation. We find him 

 referring to such groupings as the French, the Germans, the 

 English, and the Italians as races: 



'Of the two great races in which this is the most completely 

 expressed, one, the French, more northern, more prosaic, and 



